I recently took a vacation to Victoria, B.C., a wonderful city that — among other good things — is home to Dockside Green, which some people are calling the greenest development in the world.

At least with respect to new, highly urban developments-in-progress, they may have a case to make: For starters, when NRDC, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism first announced the LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot program to honor smart growth, the developers of Dockside Green made a point of the neighborhood being the program’s very first applicant. It has since earned a platinum rating under LEED-ND.

Moreover, its two completed residential phases have also earned platinum ratings under the LEED green building programs, in one case setting a new world record for the highest LEED building score ever achieved, and in the second case tying their own record. Its completed commercial phase has also earned — you guessed it — a platinum rating.

For the most part, I am going to let the photos and videos tell this rich story, but allow me to set the table with some basics. Dockside Green is on its way to becoming a 26-building redevelopment of a 15-acre, former brownfield industrial site (cleanup alone reportedly cost $20 million), being built in phases as an eventual mixed-use community of 1.3 million square feet and some 2,500 residents.

Note the context in the heart of the region, not far from the central business district; it is served by multiple transit lines.

Dockside Green is being built by the financial institution Vancity, which launched the project with its partner, Windmill Developments, a firm committed to sustainability that persuaded the city of Victoria to approve a bold green concept for the site. (All of Windmill’s projects have achieved LEED platinum certification.) Master planning was by the architecture firm of Perkins & Will (formerly Busby, Will & Perkins). Mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as LEED consulting, was provided by Stantec.

Image: Small and Rossell landscape architects

Shoreline restoration design (not yet undertaken) and other landscape design was provided by the landscape architecture firm Small and Rossell. (I’m sure I’m leaving many important contributors out. Feel free to supplement these credits in the comments.) The project is being developed in 12 phases, comprising three neighborhoods, over seven years.

Dockside Green is host to a biomass gasification plant that, along with additional renewable energy technology (including on-building windmills and solar panels), enables the development to be carbon-neutral. Each residential unit has a real-time meter showing energy and hot water usage along with associated carbon emissions, which can be easily compared with the development as a whole or the unit’s history.

The project also has significantly advanced water and waste handling systems, including its own sewage treatment and graywater recycling facilities, along with sophisticated green infrastructure and landscaping for handling stormwater, all of which is captured on site. One of the most prominent and attractive parts of the water management design — and of the project as a whole — is a constructed stream running through the development.

The stream.Photo: Maria Cook

Vancity worked with the city of Victoria to create and incorporate an affordable housing strategy to assist the project’s goal of mixed-income living. By all accounts, the developers have worked from the beginning to create not just a great development with a sustainability strategy, but a development of great ambition that has been all about sustainability from the beginning. From the project’s website:

A model for holistic, closed-loop design, Dockside Green functions as a total environmental system in which form, structure, materials, and mechanical and electrical systems interrelate and are interdependent — a largely self-sufficient, sustainable community where waste from one area will provide food for another. This is a dynamic environment where residents, employees, neighbouring businesses, and the broader community interact in a healthy and safe environment, reclaimed from disuse and contamination.

As a LEED® Platinum-targeted project, Dockside Green’s principles of New Urbanism, smart growth, green building, and sustainable community design are all essential elements of the development plan …

An integrated approach to design has been adopted, tailoring it specifically to the Dockside lands and the Victoria West community, recognizing the need to apply integrated design principles to the whole site — not just individual components and characteristics. A holistic, closed-loop design approach is the only way to enhance synergies and achieve our sustainability goals.

We strive to move the concept of whole-system costing beyond building design to include site and community infrastructure costs. For example, a sound green building strategy like ecological stormwater management will reduce infrastructure costs, while reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and heat-island effects, creating natural habitat and improving human health. Our ability to exploit whole-system thinking will be critical to our success: ecologically, socially, and financially …

So, how does this intensely green development work as a neighborhood? This may be where the “in progress” qualification comes into play. I think we are far from seeing it at its best.

Photo: InhabitatFor now, there is a fair amount of shopping right across the street, including a supermarket, so necessities are at hand. But my wife found the highly contemporary architecture a bit “austere,” and I think she has a point, especially with only a minority of the contemplated development constructed at this point; I found myself wishing for more warmth, which might come with more critical mass. In any event, whether one goes for the architecture or not is a matter of taste. We certainly didn’t dislike it. I also wished for at least a small park, which may eventually come if the waterfront is improved as contemplated in Small and Rossell’s site plan.

Dockside Green certainly isn’t yet the kind of complete, mature, multi-generational neighborhood highlighted by Scott Doyon’s “popsicle test” (can an 8-year-old go get a popsicle on her own and return home safely before it melts?) and featured in my last post. Now, there is a sense of isolation, in that it feels much more walkable internally than externally. There is still a large industrial tract between the development’s buildings and the waterfront to the east, along with a wide arterial road between the project and the commercial and residential properties on the hillside to the west. The remaining Dockside Green tracts to the south are still undeveloped, the parcels currently unkempt and fenced off. The whole surrounding area is clearly under redevelopment, though, so perhaps the critical mass that comes with neighborhood build-out will make the project feel more connected. It will be interesting to check back in a decade or so.

In the meantime, the water features are spectacular, lending quite a bit of nature to the development. We enjoyed the bakery and coffee bar, and so did quite a few others on a Tuesday morning. There were pets and a few small children around. The Galloping Goose bike trail, which runs alongside Dockside Green, was definitely being enjoyed. I came away hopeful for the neighborhood’s evolution, as well as majorly impressed by its green technology.

For additional perspective, watch these two videos. The first is a developer-sponsored, but informative, account of the neighborhood from the point of view of residents. The second presents the commentary of city officials and a founder of the environmental organization Smart Growth BC (now merged with the Canada Green Building Council):

When revitalization of our distressed neighborhoods is done well, it is almost unrivaled in its ability to advance simultaneously each aspect of the “triple bottom line” of sustainability: improving the environment, the economy, and social equity.

Revitalization is good for the environment for the reasons I discussed in a recent post; it strengthens cities and allows them to absorb population and economic growth in a nonsprawling fashion that is inherently more efficient, less consumptive, and less polluting than when development spreads out. It is good economically because it requires the building and maintenance of far less new infrastructure, and allows commerce to proceed with less travel time and distance to sap productivity; it also can increase tax revenues.

Revitalization is not always good for social equity, unfortunately, since without proper attention to the issue, residents may not be able to afford to stay in a neighborhood that becomes more expensive. But when done thoughtfully, revitalization can be very beneficial to distressed populations, as the inspiring stories of Melrose Commons in the South Bronx, Dudley Street in Boston, and Old North in St. Louis amply demonstrate.

The neighborhood scale and the usefulness of LEED-ND

Last fall I wrote that the two most important scales for thinking about a sustainable built environment are the metropolitan region and the neighborhood. Revitalization happens at the neighborhood scale, where increments of development take place, and where most people connect with their cities, their environments, and each other on an everyday basis. This is where change in our built environment occurs and is experienced most immediately.

Over the last decade, NRDC made a major investment to help improve the shape and character of American development at the neighborhood scale. With two very able partners in the Congress for the New Urbanism and the U.S. Green Building Council, we conceived and developed LEED for Neighborhood Development, the first set of consensus-based national standards to guide new development to the right places with the right sustainable design. The goal of the program has been to define what is smart about smart growth and what is green about green neighborhoods, so that the private sector, reviewing public officials, and citizens alike will be able to evaluate and encourage the right kind of development. (The U.S. Green Building Council now manages the program.)

LEED-ND was designed from the very beginning to be especially supportive of revitalization and infill development in our inner cities and older communities. We hoped to provide a boost for good proposals while they were being considered, along with a set of model standards that could be adapted by governments and others who were also seeking to encourage sustainability.

CDC-led redevelopment project in St. Louis.Photo: ONSL Restoration GroupTo our immense satisfaction, that is exactly what has been happening, notwithstanding continuing turmoil in the real estate and development industry. Over 100 neighborhood-scale projects have now been certified under LEED-ND, from Vancouver’s urban Olympic Village (now a mixed-use community), to green affordable housing in Savannah, to a revitalizing arts district in Syracuse. In addition, while LEED-ND was intended primarily to influence the private sector, we are extraordinarily pleased that the program is earning increasing government recognition, from a state incentive program in Illinois, to new city plans in El Paso and Bellingham, Wash., to the discretionary grant programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is now using LEED-ND criteria in its evaluation process.

Green revitalization of distressed neighborhoods

LEED-ND can be very useful in helping inner-city developers — including nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) — to guide smarter, greener, and more inclusive development in America’s distressed urban neighborhoods. At NRDC, we are particularly excited to be partnering in an effort to do just that with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), one of the nation’s leading sponsors of urban community development, with offices in 30 regions across the country. In 2010, LISC invested over a billion dollars in community development, leveraging a total of $2.4 billion for over 10,000 affordable homes and nearly 3 billion square feet of retail and community space.

Together, and with local partners, including neighborhood residents, we hope to use LEED-ND to assist the development of demonstration projects and templates to help CDCs and municipal development authorities incorporate sustainable practices into their work. While we hope to make a difference, this will be far from a top-down effort. We want to help communities articulate and realize their own goals in a way that will bring them environmental benefits.

The collective influence of America’s 4,600 CDCs is substantial: In an average year, CDCs and related community-based nonprofit organizations are responsible for building some 86,000 homes and billions of square feet of commercial space in neighborhoods where private interests may be reluctant to accept risk. (For perspective, 86,000 homes represents as many as produced by the nation’s top five homebuilders combined, in a non-recession year.)

The heart of our approach will feature model revitalization projects that achieve local goals while demonstrating a new commitment to sustainable revitalization and advanced practices. More specifically, we hope to help our partners achieve the following:

Locate, design, and build to a sustainability standard sufficient to achieve LEED-ND certification at a high level (including walkable, mixed-use features; transportation choices; access to parks, healthy food, jobs, and schools; and advanced techniques for energy and water management);

Involve local residents to the greatest extent possible in planning and design, and ensure that there is no net loss in affordable housing;

Apply sophisticated environmental analysis to quantify the benefits we hope to achieve;

Develop replicable approaches that can be transferred to CDCs and municipalities aro
und the country, and guidebooks to assist their implementation; and

Learn lessons along the way that can allow for continual assessment and improvement.

We know this is an ambitious agenda, and we will need the support of additional partners, including financial supporters, to make it happen. The number of projects that LISC and NRDC can undertake directly will certainly be limited by the availability of funding. But we have already begun providing assistance to some really exciting projects in Philadelphia and Indianapolis — more about those in a future post.

This is our contribution, but the challenge and opportunity to help communities improve their urban neighborhoods requires and deserves the involvement of many more parties. While I am immensely pleased that this agenda is now embraced by NRDC, we are only one organization; ultimately, we can provide some dedication and perhaps some environmental leadership, but the revitalization of America’s long-neglected neighborhoods is not about us, but about local initiatives across the country.

Fortunately, I am inspired every day by the efforts and ingenuity of neighbors and fellow travelers who share our commitment, whether it be on one city block or on a larger, programmatic scale. One of the goals of this blog is to share their stories, both to bestow a bit of well-deserved recognition on the principals, and to help others learn and become as inspired as I am.

For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns. Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from. If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban.

We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough. We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife, and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve. But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns — the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks — are really the environmental solution, not the problem: The best way to save wilderness is through strong, compact, beautiful communities that are more, not less, urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value. As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.”

For our cities and towns to function as successful people habitat, they must be communities where people want to live, work, and play. We must make them great, but always within a decidedly urban, non-sprawling form. As it turns out, compact living — in communities of streets, homes, shops, workplaces, schools, and the like assembled at a walkable scale — not only helps to save the landscape; it also reduces pollution and consumption of resources. We don’t drive as far or as often; we share infrastructure. While recent authors such as Edward Glaeser and David Owen are sometimes excessive in extolling the virtues of urban density without giving attention to the other things that make cities attractive and successful, they are absolutely right that city living reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions, and other environmental impacts.

A lot of my professional friends are committed urbanists as well as committed environmentalists. We understand the environmental advantages of urban living so thoroughly that we take it for granted that other people do, too. But we make that mistake at our — and the planet’s — peril. The increased development and maintenance of strong, sustainable cities and towns will not happen without a concerted effort.

A lot is riding on the outcome: 83 percent of America’s population — some 259 million people — live in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas. Somewhat astoundingly (and as I have written previously), 37 of the world’s 100 largest economies are U.S. metros. New York, for example, ranks 13th, with a $1.8 trillion economy equivalent to that of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; Los Angeles (18th) has an economy that is bigger than Turkey’s; Chicago’s (21st) is larger than Switzerland’s, Poland’s, or Belgium’s.

With so much population and economic activity, it can be no wonder that our working and living patterns in cities and suburbs have enormous environmental consequences, both for community residents and for the planet. And the implications are going to intensify: Over the next 25 years, America’s population will increase by 70 million people and 50 million households, the equivalent of adding France or Germany to the U.S. With a combination of building new homes, workplaces, shops, and schools and replacing those that will reach the end of their functional lives, fully half the built environment that we will have on the ground in 25 years does not now exist.

These circumstances provide not just a formidable challenge but also a tremendous opportunity to get things right. Unfortunately, past practices have done a lot of damage, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, when America severely disinvested our inner cities and traditional towns while population, investment, and tax base fled for (quite literally) greener pastures. The result, as we now know all too well, has been desecration of the natural and rural landscape while leaving behind decaying infrastructure, polluted air and waterways, and distressed populations.

Older cities and towns with shrinking revenues did what they could, but critical issues such as waste, public transportation, street and sidewalk maintenance, parks, libraries, and neighborhood schools — issues where attention and investment could have made a difference — were back-burnered or neglected altogether. Meanwhile, sprawl caused driving rates to grow three times faster than population, sending carbon and other emissions through the roof while requiring still more costly new infrastructure that was built while we neglected the old.

We cannot allow the future to mimic the recent past. We need our inner cities and traditional communities to absorb as much of our anticipated growth as possible, to keep the impacts per increment of growth as low as possible. And, to do that, we need cities to be brought back to life, with great neighborhoods and complete streets, with walkability and well-functioning public transit, with clean parks and rivers, with air that is safe to breathe and water that is safe to drink.

This, I believe, leads to some imperatives: where cities have been disinvested, we must rebuild them; where populations have been neglected, we must provide them with opportunity; where suburbs have been allowed to sprawl nonsensically, we must retrofit them and make them better. These are not just economic and social matters: these are environmental issues, every bit as deserving of the environmental community’s attention as the preservation of nature.

American drivers believe their own driving knowledge, ability, and safe driving habits are substantially superior to those of, well, just about all other American drivers. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of American drivers rate themselves as “excellent” or “very good” drivers. American drivers’ positive self-rating is more than twice as high as the rating they give to their own close friends (29 percent “excellent” or “very good”) and also other people their age (22 percent). Drivers also don’t think much of the driving ability of people from surrounding states, senior citizens, parents with young children, and especially teenagers, according to the survey.

Despite American drivers’ confidence in their abilities, many admit to practicing dangerous behaviors on the road:

Eighty-nine percent say they’ve driven faster than the posted speed limit, and 40 percent say they’ve driven more than 20 miles per hour over the limit.

Almost half (45 percent) say they have driven while excessively tired — to the point of almost falling asleep.

Fifteen percent say they have driven while intoxicated, with men almost four times more likely than women to have done so (23 percent of men versus six percent of women).

More than one-third (34 percent) have sent a text message or email while driving, but the prevalence of the practice changes by age group. Those 18-29 years of age are the most likely to text while driving (63 percent) with drivers ages 30-44 not far behind (58 percent).Texting while driving decreases with older age groups; only 25 percent of those 45-54, 6 percent of those 55-64, and 2 percent of those over 65 admit to the practice.

Fifty-three percent report having received a speeding ticket or other moving violation. Among these drivers, 44 percent say they have received three or more.

Fifty-six percent of American drivers say they have been involved in an accident, but only 28 percent of them say the accident was their own fault.

Matt and Kelly Grocoff have renovated their 110-year-old home in Ann Arbor, Mich. to state-of-the-art energy standards. Their energy bills demonstrate the results: They actually generate more energy from on-site renewable sources than they consume. The Grocoffs believe they now have the oldest “net zero” home in America.

There’s a lot to like about this, but what I like best is that the home is green not only with respect to building energy but also with respect to transportation energy, because it is in a walkable city neighborhood of older homes on compact lots on gridded streets, with services and amenities close by. They sit within a block’s walk of three schools, by my count, and there is a transit line also a block away. There’s a neighborhood pocket park just down their own block. The house today, in all its net zero glory.Photo: Kelly & Matt’s Net Zero HouseThere’s a market, a bank branch, and several restaurants within a 10- to 12-minute walk. Yet theirs is a leafy neighborhood of mostly single-family homes.

I ran the address through the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Abogo calculator for transportation costs and emissions: An average household in the Grocoffs’ neighborhood emits only half as much carbon from transportation as does an average household for the metropolitan region as a whole. This is because the Grocoffs’ more central, more walkable location shortens driving distances and tends to reduce automobile trips, compared to more outlying subdivisions.

So finally we have a well-publicized green home that is also in a green location. I hope the Grocoffs begin to stress that in their materials as they move forward. And so much the better that the home fully retains its historic character. Here’s the neighborhood (the large building complex in the lower left corner is two schools):

You can read about the Grocoffs’ energy-efficient home on their own site, on Treehugger, on annarbor.com, or on GreenovationTV, which Matt Grocoff founded. Or you can just take the three-minute video tour, courtesy of a local TV station. The home looks not just green, but also like a very nice place to live:

I once called the Atlanta BeltLine “the country’s best smart growth project.” I still haven’t seen one that is better in concept. But now, with a few years of history, how is the implementation coming along? Is the reality matching the vision?

The challenge with writing about the BeltLine is that the massive public/private undertaking is so enormous, so multifaceted, so ambitious and potentially transformative, and so complicated that it is difficult to know where to start, how much to say, and what comments are fair. I’ll try to boil it down to a few impressions that I have formed as a highly interested observer from afar:

1. The concept remains extraordinarily impressive.

Route of the BeltLine.Image: ABITo briefly review the basics, the city is seeking to invest some $2.8 billion in a new, 22-mile public transit, trails, and parks loop around the heart of the city of Atlanta on the site of an abandoned rail and industrial corridor. Because the BeltLine passes through some of the inner city’s most distressed neighborhoods, the intent is for this major public investment to leverage substantial private investment in revitalization, particularly workforce housing. The transit is to be either light rail or streetcars, connecting in several places along the loop to the MARTA regional rail transit system.

Around 2,000 acres of new, expanded, and improved parks are involved, all of which will be linked by a multi-use trail, itself a linear park, along the BeltLine as well as by the transit loop. Many of the parks are being designed to include significant green management features. The project will also involve the remediation of over a thousand acres of brownfields.

The hoped-for economic impacts include 5,600 units of workforce housing, 30,000 permanent jobs, and 48,000 person-years of construction jobs, and a $20 billion increase in the city’s tax base over 25 years. It’s an incredible bundle of related public benefits if the city and its partners can pull this off.

2. Visible benefits so far include but are largely limited to parks and trails.

Last week, a representative of the Atlanta Beltline Partnership, a fundraising and outreach affiliate of the initiative, helpfully sent me her organization’s new annual report, along with the latest report from Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI), the entity created by the city to oversee the project’s implementation. (The Partnership and ABI jointly sponsor the BeltLine’s web site.) Both point to some significant achievement in the development and improvement of parks as a result of the initiative.

From the Partnership’s report:

All over the city, the Atlanta BeltLine is beginning to take shape. In the West End, a multiuse trail is complete. Work is underway on a walking and biking path on Atlanta’s east side. And in the Old Fourth Ward, in the heart of the city, a signature park is emerging.

Historic Fourth Ward Park.Photo: HDR, Inc.Of the 20 pages of ABI’s report allocated to substantive accomplishment, 14 are devoted to parks and green space. Perhaps the most impressive of the parks work to date is the new (if awkwardly named) Historic Fourth Ward Park on the east side of the Beltline. Critic Jonathan Lerner writes of the park:

But I can say — from the times I have slipped through an opening in the fence to explore during the construction — that this is a transformative space. Its centerpiece is a sinuously shaped “lake” sunk deep into the topography that does double duty. It provides a focal point and — edged by boardwalks, bridges and piers, terraces and fountains, and a gracious amphitheater — will be an inviting activity center.

More mundanely, it functions as a stormwater detention device for this historically flood-prone location. The artificial declivity dug for the lake — emphasized by soaring granite retaining walls — along with the natural, gentler rise of the park’s topography beyond it toward the east, south, and west, creates long views up and down and lots of visual drama. The descent into it and the soft, curvaceous shapes of its hardscape and waterscape are a respite from the Historic Fourth Ward’s sharp-edged buildings and rectilinear street grid.

Site plan for the Historic Fourth Ward Park.Image: lorigamiThe park’s 17 acres include some significant green technology, according to ABI’s report:

The purpose of the lake is to provide capacity relief to the combined sewer system and is designed to integrate aesthetically with the surrounding Historic Fourth Ward Park while meeting federal consent decree requirements.

Converts five acres of former contaminated industrial land into a clean, green public space.

City of Atlanta’s first water-neutral park: All irrigation needs will be met by the storm water basin and no water will be drawn from the City’s water supply.

Utilizes energy-efficient LED lighting to minimize energy costs and provide a secure environment.

The park also includes a nifty and quite sophisticated skate park.

Among additional green features in new BeltLine parks, the new eight-acre D.H. Stanton Park on the Beltline’s south side is equipped with solar panels that, ABI says, will generate enough electricity to completely offset the park’s energy costs. And the report drily notes that the BeltLine’s new five-acre Boulevard Crossing Park (really, improve these names) was facilitated by an “innovative partnership with Trees Atlanta [that] used 24 goats to clear 1.5 acres of invasive kudzu over a three-week period in Fall 2010.”

Work has also begun on several miles of trails in at least three segments of the BeltLine. Some portions are finished and open to the public, while other portions are sufficiently cleared for “interim hiking.”

3. The transit isn’t coming for a while.

These accomplishments notwithstanding, for an urbanist like myself, the transit loop is the most important public-funded element of the BeltLine by far. Experience in other cities demonstrates that, in addition to improving transportation efficiency, fixed-route transit can be a powerful catalyst for development and private investment. But, without it, the BeltLine’s benefits will be limited at best.

Here’s some of what the ABI report says about transit:

ABI and M
ARTA are partnering to finalize the Atlanta BeltLine’s Tier I Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on behalf of the Federal Transit Administration, a major milestone in the federal funding process for transit. As part of the Atlanta BeltLine Corridor Design project, transit is being conceptually designed and integrated with the proposed trail and greenspace elements of the Atlanta BeltLine; station locations and alignment are being refined; and cost estimates are being updated.

In the upcoming year, ABI will create a Transit Implementation Strategy, initiate a Tier 2 EIS for a portion of the corridor and continue transit design and engineering through the Corridor Design and other planned projects. This work will serve as the blueprint for transit implementation and progress segments of transit to the point that they may proceed to preliminary engineering activities. This will include identification and screening of alternatives, conceptual engineering, ridership modeling, cost estimating, financial planning, and operational and maintenance planning. The Transit Implementation Strategy is anticipated to identify at least two specific segments of transit to be moved into design and/or construction in the next five years. These segments may connectthe redevelopment corridor along the Atlanta BeltLine to activity centers in the core of the city.

Hmmm, there’s a lot of deliberate uncertainty written into those paragraphs. Even the near-term projects are described as “moved into design” in the next five years … I suspect that, put another way, the city doesn’t believe it is in a position to make promises. But, meanwhile, there are apparently some things it can do — things that are going to have to be done anyway — while it continues to search for funding (and perhaps more political support?).

Conceptual rendering of transit in the BeltLine.Image: ABI via Creative Loafing.One can’t help but wonder why the “transit implementation strategy” was still in the future as of the end of 2010, when the report was prepared. I also wonder if there has been internal competition among worthy transit projects for funding: When the federal Department of Transportation’s TIGER grants were being handed out last year, the money for Atlanta went for the downtown streetcar, not the BeltLine.

I am certainly not going to argue which project was a better candidate; presumably the city made an informed decision about which was more likely to attract funds, and I have no reason to doubt their judgment. I don’t know how advanced the planning for the streetcar was at the time, for example, but surely it was more advanced than that for the BeltLine. That said, if a project of the BeltLine’s massive ambition is to succeed, sooner or later it is going to have to become the top transit priority for the city. It’s just too complicated to get done otherwise.

In the meantime, I suppose it made sense to lead with parks and green space rather than with transit. As challenging as the land acquisition, remediation, design, public engagement, and funding can be for parks, that bundle becomes far more formidable when it comes to a rail line. The public is at least getting to see some near-term accomplishment in the parks and trails.

But a case can also be made for going all-out at least for a segment, however short, of the transit line right from the start, even if they had to begin with a bus line. This would have sent an immediate signal to the public, as well as to private investors, that this project is fundamentally about transit. The unfortunate experience here in the D.C. area is that, once a community comes to love a parks-and-trail corridor, some of them will actually oppose the transit intended in the corridor (facts notwithstanding) because they want their park to remain as it is.

4. A decent start has been made on revitalization and workforce housing.

There is already some significant development along the BeltLine. As I have written before, I’m a big fan of the Glenwood Park project, although even that well-conceived and -designed project won’t realize its full potential until the transit is in place.

A rendering of the unified concept for development, trail, and transit.Image: Lord Aeck & Sargent ArchitectureIn addition, ABI reports that $8.8 million has been capitalized into the Atlanta BeltLine Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which is administered by The Atlanta Development Authority. These funds, according to the report, can be applied to incentives for new and rehabilitated housing, down payment assistance for homebuyers, and property acquisition for future affordable housing development. ABI has set up a website to help promote new affordable housing developments (two shown above) along the BeltLine and to facilitate the down payment assistance to qualifying prospects.

On the land use side, the city has divided the complicated planning process along the BeltLine into ten segments; master plans have already been completed and adopted for seven of those segments, and the process was advanced for the remaining three as of the time of the ABI report. I took a look at a presentation [PDF] on zoning changes needed for redevelopment along the BeltLine, and it is clear that planners are working with the right concepts, at least for streetscapes and parking.

ABI’s report also includes sections on community benefits (the city has identified a daunting 45 neighborhoods affected by the project), job training, and public art.

5. Some intriguing proposals have been put forward to speed the BeltLine’s implementation.

Thomas Wheatley is an Atlanta journalist who covers transportation and land use for the publication Creative Loafing. Wheatley believes that the BeltLine’s prospects for success need to be boosted by “big, bold ideas” that will be highly visible and can restore public confidence in the project. He offers five, including one in each of the city’s four quadrants:

Southwest: Turn a 31-acre parking lot into a vibrant southside neighborhood. “With the right project, some of Atlanta’s most beleaguered communities — and the entire city — could benefit” from the transformation of this long-vacant parcel, owned by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Wheatley reports that the Foundation would like the parcel to create development that “changes the script” of gentrification, but there is some concern over whether the distressed surrounding neighborhoods are strong enough to support commercial components of mixed-use.

Finally, a collaborative project born of architects, a writer, and an artist have proposed what they call a “humanist model” that would plant places of inspiration along the BeltLine, including a “mind garden,” “sound field,” and “circus politicus,” among others:

A humanist model for the Atlanta Beltline envisions more than a belt that girdles the city. It must include supportive connections to neighborhoods along the way and a pathway filled with wonder. Institutions provide substantial support and inspiration to city inhabitants, in concert with dwelling and infrastructure. It is these Institutional Belt Loops that form the nexus of our reconstruction, encircling 10 stops on the Beltline to invigorate strategic communities.

As a visionary collaborative model, we have constructed an idealized world in the representational form of a comic book. We were motivated to select a form of communication that would provide a platform for a writer, two artists and a gaggle of architects. We were able to work together by carrying forward our individual strengths to form a new synthetic vision. Though we are also aware of the comic nature of all idealized vision, this did not prevent us from joyful and serious forward progress.

The lead character in our narrative is Willa, a precocious eleven-year old …

I am not a local and won’t judge the specifics of these concepts, but I like the idea of doing highly visible demonstrations that can show more of the BeltLine’s incredible potential than one senses Atlantans have been able to see so far.

Photo: BeltLine GroupI am rooting hard for this massive, incredibly complex project. You should, too: If it succeeds, it will create an incredible model not just for Atlanta, but for cities around the world. But it has a long way to go. (The annual reports of the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership and ABI — cited extensively above — must be online, but I was unable to find either. My sense is that the two entities would benefit greatly from some communications help.)

It’s certainly well-known among my colleagues that I am passionate about cities. I’m proud to think of myself as an urbanist who believes we can no longer accept sprawl as the dominant form of land use in America. Instead, we must direct growth and development in ways that strengthen our existing cities and communities.

There are many environmental, economic, and ethical reasons why this is so, but for me personally none is more compelling than the need to reduce development pressure on our remaining natural and rural landscapes. There is a bargain implied in smart growth: Every vacant or underutilized acre that we develop in our existing communities at a walkable density displaces what would otherwise be five to six acres of sprawl and lost landscape.

It’s a bargain worth making. And it has two sides: Those who love natural areas must commit to accepting the right kind of growth in our existing communities, in order to save as much nature as we can in the countryside; and those who love cities must commit to conservation of natural landscapes and accepting limits on sprawl so that cities and towns can be reinvested and strengthened.

I’m passionate about cities, but I am also passionate about wilderness. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina before I migrated to the big city. My friend Kai Hagen (a terrific photographer whose photo accompanies this post), on the other hand, grew up in Washington, D.C. — within walking distance of where I live now, by coincidence — and migrated to the mountains. In this short and very well-produced video by The Wilderness Society, Kai reminds us why the conservation side of smart growth matters every bit as much as the development side:

Jacobs argued that modernist urban planning rejects the city, because it rejects human beings living in a community characterized by layered complexity and seeming chaos. The modernist planners used deductive reasoning to find principles by which to plan cities. Among these policies the most violent was urban renewal; the most prevalent was and is the separation of uses (i.e. residential, industrial, commercial). These policies, she claimed, destroy communities and innovative economies by creating isolated, unnatural urban spaces.

In their place Jacobs advocated for “four generators of diversity,” writing on page 151, “The necessity for these four conditions is the most important point this book has to make. In combination, these conditions create effective economic pools of use.”

Mixed uses.

Short blocks.

Buildings of various ages & states of repair.

Density.

Agreed. The excellent video below, produced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, starts with some odd, dated footage but quickly becomes highly relevant to today’s thinking about communities and sustainability — and very enjoyable, too. It also includes a surprising name-check to my hometown. Recommended:

One of the more creative ideas to emerge in those hectic (and, for some, tragic) days following Hurricane Katrina was the invention of “Katrina Cottages,” sturdier and, to my eyes, much more attractive alternatives to the FEMA trailers typically used to house displaced residents. They are prefabricated and modular, and they can be constructed on site or placed on wheels and transported like conventional mobile homes. They are also designed so that they can be anchored in place to become fixed, permanent housing. There are now many variations, but these attributes are common to all.

I am proud to say that several of my friends were involved in the cottages’ design, under the auspices of a massive volunteer effort organized by the Congress for the New Urbanism called the Mississippi Renewal Forum. I was greatly impressed by the entire effort. I was also impressed by the cottages, in part because, where I come from, mobile homes are affordable housing for a lot of people. If thoughtful design can improve the genre, that is for the better, in my opinion. And, in fact, the concept is now being employed in an increasing number of applications beyond the original post-disaster concept. (You can read the history of the Katrina Cottages here.)

Image: Cedar Street Cottages

As I result, I was intrigued and pleased to read recently that a developer is planning to recycle 12 of the cottages that are no longer needed as temporary housing, using them as permanent housing on an infill site in the town of Buena Vista, Colo. Dustin Urban writes on the developer’s blog:

This unique infill project will feature 12 beautifully designed and built one and two-bedroom “Katrina Cottages” originally used as emergency housing after hurricane Katrina. With the majority offered for long-term lease, the cottages will offer downtown living within walking distance of schools, restaurants and shops. Located a block from East Main Street, the cottages will support a more prosperous Main Street business environment and will create a beautiful streetscape complete with sidewalks and street trees.

This is terrific. The developer’s principal project in Buena Vista, South Main, is interesting in itself, with green and fitness-oriented features. One thing its housing does not appear to be, though — at least so far — is small. Another part of the developer’s website trumpets a large, custom-built Spanish Colonial house on “a large lot” with “South Main’s most sizeable private outdoor space to date,” apparently intended to be used as a part-time residence.

Finally, Ocean Springs, Miss. is home to a mature, mixed-use enclave of some 23 Katrina Cottages on a two-acre site called Cottage Square. The project was developed by architect Bruce Tolar and Enterprise Community Partners, the national affordable-housing organization. Enterprise, which NRDC helped to establish an award-winning green housing program a few years ago, owns the project. It was built as a demonstration of the potential of the cottages, especially when employed together as a neighborhood.

Tolar has an office in the project, which also hosts a hair salon and real estate office in addition to homes. Lynn Lofton wrote in The Mississippi Business Journal:

The group of cheerful-looking cottages with their white picket fences and welcoming front porches are making a statement about alternative living in Ocean Springs. Cottage Square is being developed on a two-acre plot on Government Street near downtown of this walkable town. Planners hope it will serve as a model for the concept of mixed-use zoning and affordable housing. The cottages, built in a coastal style and painted pastel colors, are built to hurricane codes …

“We work with local governments and developers to help provide housing,” said Michelle Whetten, Gulf Coast director for Enterprise. “We were invited to participate by the Katrina Cottage Group because we share a lot of the same goals, and we wanted to demonstrate how these cottages can be used. We also share their emphasis for green, energy-efficient housing” …

She and Tolar believe the cottages are best when they’re in a planned group such as this one. “They work best in a group with a mix of styles, uses and income levels,” she said.

I have written before about the potential for cottage-sized housing, and think the Katrina model has advanced the possibilities. I hope it continues to catch on.

Here’s a very informative video tour of Cottage Square, discussing the cottages’ history and showing how the neighborhood can support a sustainable lifestyle:

I wrote in May about a report by Richard Florida that city crime had dropped to its lowest rate in 40 years. Now there’s more: Last week, Florida wrote another intriguing analysis of recent crime data for The Atlantic. Looking inside the numbers and at recent research, he shatters a number of popular myths: that crime is higher when economic times are hardest; that big cities and minority populations are incubators of crime; that immigration breeds crime.

None of these myths are supported by recent facts, according to Florida. Here’s some of his latest report:

Almost three years into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, with massive unemployment and pessimism rife, America’s crime rates are falling and no one — not our pundits, policemen, or politicians, our professors or city planners — can tell us why. As I wrote about here, there were 5.5 percent fewer murders, forcible rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults reported in 2010 than in 2009, according to the most recent edition of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report; property crimes fell by 2.8 percent over the same period and reported arsons dropped by 8.3 percent.

And the drop was steepest in America’s biggest cities — which are still popularly believed to be cauldrons of criminality. “While cities and suburbs alike are much safer today than in 1990,” notes a recent report by the Brookings Institution, “central cities — the big cities that make up the hubs of the 100 largest metro areas — benefited the most from declining crime rates. Among suburban communities, older, higher-density suburbs saw crime drop at a faster pace than newer, lower-density, emerging, and exurban communities on the metropolitan fringe.”

New York City: safer than ever. Photo: Andrew MaceFlorida notes that the Brookings report also found that the association between crime and the proportion of the community population that is black, Hispanic, poor, or foreign-born has diminished considerably over time. “The strength of the relationship between the share of black residents and property crime decreased by half between 1990 and 2008,” says Brookings, “while the association between the share of Hispanic residents and violent crime all but disappeared.”

All very encouraging, especially for unabashed urbanists such as myself. But the most intriguing part of Florida’s article concerns diversity:

[T]he key factor [related to decreasing crime], as it turns out, lies in the growing racial, ethnic, and demographic diversity of our cities and metro areas. Our analysis found that the Hispanic share of the population is negatively associated with urban crime. Crime also fell as the percentage of the population that is non-white and the percentage that is gay increased. And of all the variables in our analysis, the one that is most consistently negatively associated with crime is a place’s percentage of foreign-born residents. Not only did we find a negative correlation (-0.36) between foreign-born share and crime in general, the pattern held across all of the many, various types of crime — from murder and arson to burglary and car theft.

I may as well start with the caveat that any attempt to measure, score, or rank places with respect to almost anything will be incomplete at best and can be wildly misleading at worst. First, rating systems tend to assign numerical grades to things that are partially or entirely subjective. Which city has the “best” transit service is not just a matter of coverage and service frequency, for example, but also of passenger comfort, convenience for riders’ destinations (which vary from one to another), and whether the door-to-door experience feels safe, among other things.

Second, even measurements based on quantitative data are complicated. A rating of a city as “highly walkable” because of a large number of conveniences available within a short distance to a large number of people may mask that its sidewalks are actually in poor repair and poorly lit. Settlement in Atlanta spreads far beyond the city limits (in green).Photo: Google EarthSo does one need to calculate measures (or proxy measures) of such factors? And then there’s the whole matter of definition, since a “city” defined by an antiquated municipal boundary won’t be the same as a city defined by actual patterns of settlement and employment (see image of Atlanta, left). And so on.

That said, such ratings and rankings are fun, because they start conversations about what is important. And they can be useful, especially if the authors spend some time describing the particular characteristics that cause a place to be evaluated favorably or unfavorably.

Overall evaluations

So, with that out of the way, let’s get to the findings of a new study of 27 large American and Canadian cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit, conducted for the global corporate giant Siemens. By the Unit’s evaluation, the top cities in their “Green City Index” were:

San Francisco

Vancouver

New York City

Seattle

Denver

The least green, starting with the lowest rated, were these:

Detroit

St. Louis

Cleveland

Phoenix

Pittsburgh

The top four certainly offer no surprises; few people would quibble with finding them in a top 10, certainly, in some order or other. I suppose one could quarrel with Denver at No. 5, but it isn’t shocking to see it there. The bottom five already make me wonder about the criteria, though, since four of them are Rust Belt cities that, though economically distressed, may include populations whose living habits produce relatively small environmental footprints compared with those of, say, sprawling Charlotte or Dallas.

Even St. Louis, next-to-last in the overall rankings, has community gardens.Photo: ONSL Restoration Group(In the interest of disclosure, I should note that I am an advisory board member and a longtime content contributor to the Sustainable Cities Collective, which is supported by Siemens. In addition, two of my very good personal and professional friends served on the expert advisory panel for this report. And Natural Resources Defense Council hosts our own evaluation of best city practices on our Smarter Cities website. All that said, I learned about this study and report only through the media.)

Most of the largest cities in the two countries were part of the study but some big names were not: Baltimore, Milwaukee, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Austin, Cincinnati, Kansas City, and New Orleans, for example.

The overall ratings are based on composite numerical scores derived from ratings for the separate categories of carbon dioxide, energy, land use, buildings, transport, water, waste, air, and environmental governance. While Siemens deserves credit for taking on the issue of urban sustainability and studying some very important factors, one can already see some issues: Couldn’t one say that CO2, energy, and buildings all look at the same thing, more or less? Where are health and fitness? Don’t parks deserve their own category (instead of being lumped into land use)? Looking at a report where Charlotte ranks in the top 10 for land use while Pittsburgh is 19th, for example, makes one question the criteria.

Speaking of which, I’ll devote the rest of today’s post to the study’s findings with respect to land use and transportation, categories of particular interest to many readers.

Land use

Here are your top five for land use:

New York City

Minneapolis

Ottawa

Boston

Vancouver

Bottom five, starting with the worst:

Cleveland

Detroit

Atlanta

St. Louis

Dallas

Charlotte, Calgary, and Miami significantly outranked Seattle, Chicago, and Toronto for land use. Even Houston ranked in the top half. Really?

Are sidewalk trees, like these in L.A., examples of good land use?Photo: Pieter EdelmanAs it turns out, the scoring of each city was based on four equally weighted factors, two of which were calculated from reported data (percentage of protected green space as a portion of total land area, and population density) — and two of which were scored according to expert judgment (green land-use policies such as tree planting, and policies for containment of sprawl). I suspect that the Rust Belt cities, which have lost inner-city population, may have been disadvantaged in the population density measurement if the researchers looked only within the municipal limits of the central city. That’s unfortunate.

In any event, there’s a bigger point to be made, though it is relegated to the fine print of the report: “The average density for [the cities studied] is 8,100 people per square mile, which is about 2.5 times less than for Asian cities, at 21,100 people per square mile, and is also less than in Latin America (11,700) and in Europe (10,100).”

According to the report, Minneapolis earned its high ranking by having a very high portion of protected space within its city limits (I wonder how they counted the lakes), and by being evaluated highly in the two subjective measures. Its density actually falls below the median. Charlotte made the top 10 primarily because of the strong expert evaluation given to its policies for green space and revitalization. Among the four factors, I would have given more weight to density.

Cleveland scored poorly because only 6 percent of its land area is given to protected green space (th
e median was 12 percent) and because its inner-city population density is low. I am shocked that Toronto was apparently downgraded for its failure to address sprawl, given that Ontario’s plan for the “Greater Golden Horseshoe” region around the city is one of the best that I have seen anywhere. Any measure of sprawl containment efforts that looks only within central city limits misses the point, if you ask me.

I wish that the study had examined the mix of land uses (perhaps using a measure similar to Walk Score) and, with respect to parks, had measured access (percentage of population living within a certain distance of a park) rather than gross acreage.

Transport

Top five:

New York City

Vancouver

San Francisco

Montreal

Ottawa

Bottom five, starting with the worst:

Detroit

Phoenix

Charlotte

Los Angeles

St. Louis

Denver, with its light rail system, won praise for transit planning and construction.Photo: Jeffrey BeallFor this category, there are five equally weighted factors. Three are quantitative: share of workers traveling to work by transit, bicycle, or walking; public transport supply, measured by miles of transit network per square mile of area; and average commute time (and this is considered “green” because … ?). Two were qualitatively evaluated by the experts: how extensively the city promotes public transportation and low-carbon travel, and assessment of a city’s efforts to reduce congestion. Assuming the report is referring to motor vehicle congestion, I fail to see what that has to do with the environment (other than contributing somewhat to air pollution, which has its own category separate from transport). I would replace one of those two questionable categories with street connectivity (measured by intersections per square mile), which we know from research is closely associated with rates of walking and vehicle use. And where are vehicle miles traveled per capita, perhaps the most important transportation measure of all?

Charlotte and L.A. were severely undermined by poor performance on the quantitative measures, as one might expect. Personally, though, I might grade them both highly with respect to qualitative policy aspirations, given Charlotte’s superb street-design guidance and its efforts to leverage its light rail system for transit-oriented development, and given L.A.’s aggressive efforts to increase transit supply (which does get a mention). The study also rightly praises Denver’s ambitious program of transit planning and construction, along with Montreal’s bike-sharing program and New York’s new midtown pedestrian zones.

I am very surprised that Washington, D.C. (13th) was not ranked higher for transportation, given that we have the second-busiest rail transit system in the country, a streetcar system in the works, the second highest percentage of commuters walking to work, and an aggressive program to support bicycling (including a great bikeshare program). We were apparently downgraded by a long average commute time, which is dubious as a measure of environmental performance.

Washington, D.C. did not make the top 10 for transportation, despite its good track record for carless commuting.Photo: FK Benfield At any rate, more interesting than the individual city scoring and ranking were some larger findings: The Canadian cities studied, for example, have almost nine times more public transit network per square mile than the U.S. cities (6.2 miles per square mile versus 0.7 mi/sq mi). Wow. In addition, 74 percent of Canadians in the study drive to work, as compared to 90 percent in the U.S. cities. (Both numbers are poor compared to Europe, where the comparable portion is 43 percent.) Unsurprisingly, the higher-density U.S. and Canadian cities as a group outperformed the study’s average with respect to transit usage.

The commitment of Siemens to these issues is laudable. But, as I said at the top of the post, there are going to be problems with almost any methodology. It appears that there are some significant ones with respect to these particular categories. Much more valuable is that they get us talking about what’s really important.

Next, I will look at the rest of the study. Check out the full report [PDF], and extras like the press conference announcing the findings, a slide show, and a video.

This study [PDF], based on 2001 data from Canada, isn’t new. But it is telling, and I suspect the only distinctions between its findings and what we might learn from more current data would be of degree. Look at the amounts spent in various categories of expenditure, and the difference between those households whose total expenditure exceeds income (spenders) and those whose total expenditure equals or is less than income (savers):

While savers had higher incomes, as would be expected, overall the spending habits of the two categories were remarkably similar. The one major difference was in spending for transportation, where spenders outspent savers by 54 percent, primarily due to car purchases. (Another difference was that savers paid more income tax.)

This confirms that the costs of car ownership significantly affect household spending and suggests that those costs may hinder the ability of lower-income households to save. The findings in the published report do not compare categories of spending as portions of household income, but other research has found that lower-income households spend a much higher portion of income on transportation than the average, at least in the U.S.

The study was conducted by Raj. K. Chawla and Ted Wannell of Statistics Canada, a government bureau. It also compared differences in spending habits between 1982 and 2001.

One of the tenets of Buddhism is mindfulness: being fully present and aware. Although I am far from a religious person, I get that, at least in theory. If one is fully committed to something, even a task as simple and familiar as eating a meal, one is more complete, more alive, or so it seems to me.

(Bear with me. The philosophical part of the post doesn’t last too long.)

When we are less than fully mindful, however, as we tend to be all the time in today’s hyper-multitasked world, we miss a lot. By attempting to experience everything, we experience nothing in depth. And so it is with the places around us — where we live, work, and visit. We know them well in some ways, I guess, but not as well as we could.

So sometimes we need a little help focusing. This can come in the form of a new way to experience, to think about, our cities and neighborhoods. A fresh perspective, if you will. Fortunately, several of my urbanist friends and the people I follow in the media are showing us the way.

Here are five ways to see familiar places differently, and thus to learn about them:

1.Document them

Photo: Chuck WolfeChuck Wolfe, on his always-provocative blog myurbanist, urges us to “create an urban diary.” For Chuck himself, a superb photographer, more often than not this means photographing, as with his image of San Francisco’s Fog Hill Market shown at the top of the post. But writing and drawing work, too. The key is purposeful involvement with a place:

The premise is simple: cities are hubs of human interaction, and the urban experience can be enhanced by authentic participation in the dynamics of a place and transitions to nearby venues, including other neighborhoods, or, in certain instances, nearby towns.

Simultaneously, the growing art of urban exploration-infiltrating and documenting cities in new, often controversial ways-offers more “experiential understanding.” However, as recently voiced with some skepticism by Bradley Garrett in Domus, citizen fascination and compilation of urban decay or hidden infrastructure should not be confused with more studied academic documentary efforts.

Rather than simply receive and review such messages (or debate their validity), why not document your own choice of how to live? Why not create your own urban diary? …

Personal documentation of the journey from place to space — crossing and intersecting the public and private realms — may be the best way to understand where we live, the choices we make and those that are made for us.

As a writer and photographer myself, I know I experience places and events differently when I am documenting, or using them to create, than I do otherwise. It creates perspective and purpose. I notice different things. (That’s not always good, by the way; sometimes putting the camera or note pad down in order to have a more direct and personal immersion is the better thing to do. But generally the experience of documenting does add concentration and mindfulness.) Read all of Chuck’s article here.

2. Name them

My friend Steve Mouzon, who articulates simple but deep truths about places in as compelling a way as I have encountered, recently wrote in his Original Green Blog about the power of names — and, in particular, of naming a place that previously has been nameless. Steve articulates his thoughts in the context of helping recovering neighborhoods in New Orleans:

Southerners, especially those from the Crescent City, are often master story-tellers. Many of them will tell you that they can weave a more compelling tale when places and buildings in that tale have nifty names … ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ rather than ‘highway 431, a couple miles out of town. ‘High Rustler’ instead of ‘the efficiency unit in Robert Orr’s house.’ ‘Printer’s Alley’ rather than ‘the alley between 3rd and 4th Avenues.’ Tara was by no means the first southern house to be named, nor the last …

Our study area contained place after nameless place with the beginnings of coolness. Sometimes, it was because of the people moving there, like the rag-tag band of artists opening a few galleries on a certain stretch of St. Claude. Other times, it was because of the physical configuration of the place, like the funky little double triangle where you can find Flora’s, Mimi’s, and Schiro’s.

So why not name each of these places? The galleries on St. Claude could be Gallery Row. What aspiring new artists wouldn’t want to be located on Gallery Row? Every town has its Five Points, but the funky little double triangle actually has seven streets coming out of it, so it should be Seven Points.

See the image to the right for what I believe to be Steve’s Seven Points neighborhood, allowing for some double-counting of the “points” (I know I’m close, given the three etablishments he mentioned). Steve adds some important thoughts about how the act of naming a place can help it become something that is currently perhaps only aspirational, and to help it become more important:

Most of the names qualify as ‘telling the truth in advance,’ because the places aren’t nearly so cool … yet. But with a name that conveys a clear intent for the future of the place, it’s far more likely that people will buy into that future …

There’s another aspect as well: the more important something is in your life, the more likely you are to name it. Children invariably get named within the first couple days of life; pets get named quickly as well. So naming a place doesn’t just predict the future condition of the place, it seals that prediction with the importance of all things named.

Does naming a place give it more purpose? For more of Steve’s great reflections on the subject, go here.

3. Map them in new ways

I’ve learned to my occasional amazement that not everyone thinks as spatially as I do and that, perhaps as a result, maps are far more fascinating to me than they are to many others. But nearly all of us encounter them and use them: They bring seeming authoritative definition to places both large (e.g., South America) and small (even a single block, as in the case of the redevelopment of Seattle’s Thornton Creek or St. Louis County’s Jamestown Mall). Most of us have had the experience of being rescued from disorientation by a good map as well as of being confused or misled by a bad one. We tend to see a place the way it is shown in the map.

If maps are your thing, right now life is a candy shop and you are the kid. The combination of easily accessible satellite imagery made possible by such providers as Google Earth, along with constant improvements in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology allowing us to map not just places but also increasingly precise spatial distributions of land, population, health, environmental, and economic characteristics, has opened up worlds of possibility.

The best thing about this project — directly responsible for its power to help us think in new ways — is that it uses both highly subjective skills such as sketching places from memory (thus, presumably, the “mental” part of Mental Maps) and very precise technology such as GIS. The idea is to represent the city not in the standardized way of, say, Rand-McNally, but in the various ways that people actually experience it. Fabin Neuhaus describes the project in The Sustainable Cities Collective:

The great aspect [of] this project ‘Visualizing Mental Maps of San Francisco‘ by Rachelle Annechino and Yo-Shang Cheng is how they allow room for the method to breathe the uncertainty of its nature. Mental Mapping is not about accuracy and precision, or truth and objectivity, and to combine this with GIS or mapmaking is a very difficult task [if] not to say impossible.

The essential thing is to give the playfulness a meaning and find a balance for mapping it in GIS. With this project it is not achieved in the detail, but in the overall construction, how the different sections combine and the picture the presented result paints.

A memory sketch of neighborhood locations in San Francisco, above (note the author’s question marks in the southern part of the city).

A second map of neighborhoods (right), this time illustrating the degree of neighborhood completeness represented by the presence of commercial and mixed-use streets. The map also illustrates the relative absence of completeness in “dead zones” of residential areas with little in the way of shops or services nearby. Places zoned for commercial activity are shown in shades of blue, light to dark according to relative population density, while places not allowing commercial activity are shown in shades of brown. (Click on the map for a larger version showing more of the detail.) Note that there are some very dense places (dark red/brown) that lack commercial zoning. It would be interesting to compare this map with Walk Score’s composite map of San Francisco, showing how that service’s scores (which measure nearby shops and services) are distributed across the city.

For me the most intriguing is a map (below) showing the location of pedestrian barriers such as high-speed roads and steep slopes, marking potential boundaries between neighborhoods.

The Visualizing Mental Maps of San Francisco project taps into San Francisco residents’ perceptions of the city and its neighborhoods, which aren’t always reflected in the geography of a street map. The first part of the project was a qualitative investigation in which we interviewed residents and asked them to draw pictures of their internal images or ‘mental maps’ of the neighborhoods they lived in and of San Francisco. The second part was the creation of visualizations informed by the qualitative research, resulting in this atlas of mental maps.

Every map has a perspective, and every map is ‘wrong’ in some way … A precise, accurate map asks us to believe that we know what a place is called, what its borders are, and where it belongs within a standardized hierarchy of space. But do we really know all those things? From whose perspective?

If yo
ur instincts are more inclined toward the subversive, you may be drawn (heh) to the work of the Toronto Urban Repair Squad, which paints bike lanes on city streets where they think they should be, regardless of whether the city agrees. A similar group in Mexico City paints pedestrian walkways and crossings:

When governments don’t build infrastructure, citizens usually complain, but can’t do much about it. They pressure public officials and protest against proposed projects, but that’s as far as citizen participation in city building usually goes. It’s reactive, not proactive.

However, this model of citizen participation is being rethought by citizens around the world. They are taking control over what happens in their cities. They are helping to build them, mostly with paint. Local groups all around the world are taking the initiative and are building the infrastructure that governments refuse or are slow to do.

The Urban Repair Squad has a simple motto: “They say city is broke. We fix. No charge.” The group in Mexico City (Camina Haz Ciudad) has been successful in getting their city to take action in the places they have brought to public attention. Additional groups reportedly have formed in Los Angeles and Victoria, B.C.

5. Envision them with graphic facilitation

The last idea for today came to me via Joel Mills, director of the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Communities by Design. Joel and his colleagues administer a program that sets up charrettes (collective brainstorming sessions that assist planning) to help communities work through challenges that might be helped by intensive, condensed architectural thinking and planning. This requires a range of skills, as many of you know and others can well imagine. One of them is listening to the voices of the community and helping them synthesize their thoughts.

This is where Julie Stuart’s firm Making Ideas Visible comes in. You know those meetings where people have flip charts on which facilitators scribble down what they hear (frequently getting it almost but not quite right), and then tape the various pages all over the walls? I guess some people find that useful, but I’ve always thought that there has to be a better way.

There is. Take Stuart’s summary of ideas for a green corridor in Santa Rosa, Calif. The soccer field is represented by a ball heading into the net; alternative energy by solar panels on a roof; there’s a dog to represent the dog park, a playground, a garden, and so on. These sketches are not artistically sophisticated or precise. That’s not the point; they must be done quickly. But they bring ideas alive in a way that words alone cannot (recalling Chuck Wolfe’s photographic urban diaries at the top of this post), and the format alleviates the mind-numbing boredom that can accompany some of these flip-chart meetings. My guess is that they make the process of imagining better communities just a bit more stimulating and fun.

So there you have it for today. For me, each of these exercises brings a fresh perspective, enabling me to see and understand a neighborhood or a city in a different way. A more purposeful and, ultimately, more mindful way. I’m sure there are five, or 50, additional great ways in which we can see our communities anew and add to the accumulated truth that we know about them, as well as about our aspirations for making them better. I’ll get to more of them over time, no doubt. In the meantime, I am grateful for the artists and thinkers that have led me, and now you, to these.

At the bottom of this post are two short videos about Detroit, both featuring architect and planner Mark Nickita, principal of the city’s Archive Design Studio and a lifelong Detroit resident. In a very refreshing change from the mind-numbing negativity one usually hears about the city, Nickita is upbeat and hopeful. His point of view, emphasizing revitalization, is much closer to my own than much of what I read, which effectively takes the approach that the city has somehow been abandoned beyond redemption, leaving the only question how to manage its more-or-less permanent shrinkage.

But it’s not that simple.

There has indeed been a decline in part of the region. In 1970, 1,670,144 people lived within the city limits of Detroit. By 2010, that number had declined to 713,777, an astounding apparent loss of some 57 percent of the 1970 population. Recently, much has been made the 25 percent population decline over the last decade, from 2000 (951,270) to 2010.

But the extent to which Detroit is such a tragically “shrinking city” depends on your definition of “city.” The population of metropolitan Detroit — the jurisdictional inner city and its immediate suburbs — did decline from 1970 to 2010, but only from 4,490,902 to 4,296,250, a loss of only 4 percent. Big difference.

Do the math: What that means is that, while the inner city’s population was declining so drastically, its suburbs added some 761,000 people, growing at the handsome rate of 27 percent. (In the most recent decade of 2000-2010, the suburbs added some 91,000 people, or between 2 and 3 percent.) Patrick Cooper-McCann writes on his blog Rethink Detroit that, far from shrinking, the physical size of metro Detroit grew by 50 percent in those 40 years. As I’ve written before, neither the economy nor the environment pay attention to jurisdictional lines; neither should analysts.

Look at the maps below. On the left, the physical size of metro Detroit around 1900; in the middle, by 1950, the developed area had grown; and on the right, by 2000, it had become immense:

Images: CNU19

Under current trends, it’s only going to get more expansive: As of 2004, the region’s planning agency was predicting that, over 30 years, the amount of developed land in metro Detroit is going to expand yet another 36 percent or more. “390,000 more acres bulldozed for progress. The development will continue to be mostly single-family housing, and will require more sewers, more stores and more schools,” wrote Sheryl James of the Detroit Free Press (published on the website Urban Planet).

Shrinking city? Really? What this tells me is that an even bigger problem for Detroit than the decline of the Rust Belt economy has been that the fringe of the region has been allowed, more than in most places, to expand, not shrink, and to suck the life and hope out of the inner city. So why aren’t the self-styled progressive responses to “the Detroit problem” addressing this critical aspect of the situation?

Maybe they are, but the only ones I hear and read are about “right-sizing” the inner city — demolishing vacant (and even some occupied) housing, letting vast areas revert to nature or farming, and so forth. Let sprawl, the cause of the problem, be someone else’s issue to address. But, in fact, the areas that are sprawling are where the “right-sizing” most needs to occur.

Whether or not there is any good in the current approach for Detroit as a community, it is impossible to see how it will be good for the region’s carbon emissions. Just as is the case in every other U.S. metro area, households on the fringe emit far more CO2 than households in the center of the region, because their inhabitants walk less, drive longer distances, and drive more often. On the map above from the Center for Neighborhood Technology, households in the areas in red emit, on average, 8.6 metric tons or more of carbon dioxide per year from transportation; households in the pale yellow areas in the center emit 3.3 metric tons or less. Again, big difference.

The way to stem pollution is to address the unchecked expansion on the fringe and keep the center as urban as possible. In this troubled place even more than in others, Detroit needs a regional approach, not just demolitions in the center.

In the first video below, Mark Nickita discusses the importance of, and prospects for, revitalizing the Woodward Avenue corridor (above) that forms the Detroit region’s historic and economic backbone:

In the next (which actually was recorded first), Nickita discusses what’s really been happening with regard to population in the Motor City:

(Note: Nickita’s numbers on the region’s population are bigger than mine because I conservatively used the six-county, census-defined Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to define the region; Nickita used the nine-county Combined Metroplitan Statistical Area.)

Leave it to a city famous for coffee and rain to produce possibly the best example of transit-oriented urbanism, natural public space, and green stormwater infrastructure I have ever seen. This Seattle redevelopment is green in so many ways that it is hard to know where to start.

Maybe we should start with the parking lot, because that’s what the whole nine-acre site was before redevelopment began. Ugly. Horrible for the environment. A complete waste of urban space:

The site is in an area that is transitioning from automobile-oriented and suburban in feel to walkable and lively. It sits just south of the Northgate shopping mall, northeast of a community college, a couple of blocks east of the I-5 freeway, and just west of an area of single-family homes. It is transit-rich, however, just a block from a major bus transfer station (with planned light rail access).

Enter the city of Seattle, with a sophisticated initiative to bring long-buried Thornton Creek back to life above the surface, where it belongs. Add lots of carefully planned nature (not really an oxymoron when we’re dealing with a city), arranged to be highly walkable and educational as well as environmentally beneficial. The creek restoration was led under contract to the city by Seattle’s SvR Design, which previously designed the landscape and green infrastructure features of the much-celebrated, mixed-income High Point development, also in Seattle.

Carved out of an abandoned parking lot, the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel treats urban stormwater runoff from 680 acres within a necklace of channels, pools, and terraces designed to mimic the performance of a natural creek. Its lush plantings, overlooks, and paths have added 2.7 acres of public open space to the Northgate Urban Center and catalyzed surrounding redevelopment. The facility is a model for how multi-functional landscapes can be integrated into the dense urban fabric.

Designed to remove an estimated 40-80 percent of total suspended solids from 91 percent of the average volume of annual stormwater runoff from the 680-acre drainage basin.

Created new habitat within this heavily paved commercial area. Within one month after opening, native birds were observed at the project. A variety of desirable native volunteer plants have migrated into the site and begun to establish.

Eighty-five percent of the project’s plant palette are native species, including 172 native trees, 1,792 native shrubs, and 49,000 native perennials, herbs, grasses, rushes, and sedges. The planting mix and the channel’s alignment will be allowed to evolve naturally over time. When was the last time you saw this much additional urban density, increased natural space, and reduced imperviousness on the same site? (For more of the technical details, see the city’s extensive report [PDF] on the project.)

The city is understandably pleased with the results. Note the credit to community involvement:

The [Thornton Creek Water Channel] Facility is designed to remove pollutants from stormwater by slowing urban runoff before these flows enter the creek. The Facility, in conjunction with improvements to surrounding roadways, Northgate Mall, Northgate Library and the Northgate Community Center, is part of a larger strategy to revitalize the Northgate Urban Center. Community involvement was instrumental in making the Facility successful from a number of perspectives. A stakeholder group, made up of a broad balance of community, environmental and business interests, helped drive the Facility’s design, which resulted in a Facility design that integrates environmental and commercial concern … The Facility was constructed by Seattle Public Utilities with funding support from Washington State Department of Ecology via a Washington State Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund Loan.

Nice job.

This leads us to the urbanist part of the redevelopment, which is every bit as impressive as the improvements to public space and water quality. Much of the credit for this accomplishment belongs to a new development called Thornton Place, comprising 109 condos, 278 apartments (20 percent priced below market), a 14-screen cinema, 50,000 square feel of retail, and a very appealing plaza that gives the block a great urban public space in counterpoint to the natural one. Thornton Place was developed by the Swedish-founded Stellar Holdings [PDF].

According to a story by Eric Pryne in The Seattle Times, Stellar actually offered prospective condo buyers a “layoff-protection plan in hopes of spurring sales in this sour market.” Reflecting the anxiety of current circumstances, the developers agreed to make mortgage payments for up to six months if a condo buyer loses his or her job within the first year.

Writing in the tastefully titled blog hugeasscity, Dan Bertolet says that Thornton Place is really Seattle’s first transit-oriented development, and that the developer deserves credit for taking some risks:

Northgate has been targeted for growth by city planners for decades: It is a designated Urban Center, a bus transit hub and future light rail station area. But the existing car-oriented, single-use built environment around the mall is a highly unappealing site for small-scale mixed-used residential development — what developer would risk being the lonely pioneer amidst a sea of big box and parking lots? In contrast, a large project like Thornton Place creates a center of gravity powerful enough both to keep itself alive, and to be a catalyst for future adjacent development.

Bertolet writes (and I agree) that the walkability of the project would have been even better if it had been broken up into two blocks with a through street in the center, taking advantage of an opportunity to restore lost street connectivity. That would have required some serious design thought to avoid compromising the natural area, of course. But (sigh) neighbors objected, fearing additional traffic (actually, a through street would have reduced, not increased, congestion), and the result is still outstanding for its context.

A Thornton Place terrace.Photo: Thornton PlaceIn addition to the environmental benefits derived from its land recycling, transit access (transit center, photo left), and urbanism, Thornton Place has [PDF] a district heating system, energy-efficient and resource-conserving buildings (LEED-certified), recycled construction waste, and preferred parking for alternative-fueled vehicles. It registered for the LEED-ND pilot program, but as far as I can tell has not yet fully submitted its documentation to be certified.

Across the creek from Thornton Place is a laudable project called Aljoya, comprising 143 units of assisted-living housing for seniors, on the southeast corner of the site. Aljoya was developed by Era Living. The city also brought more investment to the area, adding a new neighborhood library and community center just northeast of the redevelopment block.

The city’s report on the water channel project highlights the overall redevelopment’s outstanding mix of nature and urbanism:

The Facility united a divided community, fulfilling collective goals of providing a diverse housing mix, jobs, retail, recreation, public open space, raising environmental awareness, and improving Thornton Creek water quality. The Facility serves as the front yard for the private commercial and residential development that flanks it. Indeed, the Facility’s development and construction, which cost approximately $14.7 million is believed to have generated over $200 million in adjacent private development. It has catalyzed the Northgate neighborhood’s emergence as a growing urban center for the City of Seattle.

Let’s raise a glass (or cup) to that. I have a feeling that this project is going to start showing up in a lot of case studies and presentations, including my own, and deservedly so.

Rob Steuteville has posted a terrific analysis on the New Urban Network rebutting the claim by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) that “the existing body of research demonstrates no clear link between residential land use and greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Rob responds with Todd Litman’s excellent research and writing [PDF] on the subject, along with the great mapping from the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) of CO2 emissions per household for every metro area in the U.S. As Rob points out, CNT’s research shows a very consistent geography in just about every region: The farther out one goes from downtowns and strong suburban centers, with their superior central locations and neighborhood characteristics, the greater the miles driven and carbon emitted per household.

Image: Center for Neighborhood Technology

I’m headed to a conference later this month in Wilmington, Del., so I pulled CNT’s emissions map of the region containing Wilmington. The areas in red on the map above basically have two or more times the per-household transportation emissions of the areas in light yellow.

Image: Center for Neighborhood Technology

Just for illustration, we can see that a very similar pattern holds for metro Phoenix, an area most of us would consider to be dissimilar to Wilmington.

Rob writes that the flaw in NAHB’s analysis is that they looked only at the density of residential development, in isolation from other relevant factors:

If all you do is bring people closer together, you get modest reductions in gasoline consumption. But if you do all of the other things associated with smart growth — that is to say, create a walkable environment with multiple destinations and alternative modes of transportation — the impacts on vehicle miles traveled, energy use, and greenhouse-gas emissions are huge.

That is true as far as it goes, but I would go further to clarify the most important factor of all is what transportation researchers call regional accessibility (sometimes also called “destination” accessibility), or the location of a place within a region. The more central a place is to the region, or to a strong suburban center, the lower the vehicle miles traveled, in large (though not exclusive) part because driving distances become shorter.

In Ewing and Cervero’s exhaustive study of the published literature, they found that such locations are as significant in reducing driving rates as the next two significant factors (street connectivity and mixed land use) combined. (See graph above comparing the significance of five major factors.) As Todd Litman puts it, “residents of more central neighborhoods typically drive 10-30 percent fewer vehicle miles than residents of more dispersed, urban fringe locations.”

This is why smart growth favors infill and redevelopment and disfavors new greenfield development on the fringe of a region. It is also a principal (though not the only) reason why those CO2 maps show such lower emissions rates in the centers of regions. I sometimes make a point to mention the importance of location because it can get lost in discussions among designers. It is especially critical to understand when we start discussing concepts such as the oxymoronic “agrarian urbanism” — a type of development that, if pursued improperly, could lead to greater dispersal of development across regions, and consequently to increased emissions.

Street connectivity, by the way, is the strongest indicator of how much walking takes place in a neighborhood. Many thanks to Rob for taking this on.

In the late 1990s, when Don Chen, Matt Raimi, and I were researching our book, Once There Were Greenfields, we lamented the flight of business from America’s central cities to increasingly outer suburbs and farmland. In that book we frequently turned for data to metropolitan Chicago where, for example, Ameritech had built a half-mile-long “landscraper” near O’Hare Airport far from the Loop, Motorola had set up camp in Schaumberg, and Sears had fled the iconic Sears Tower for Hoffman Estates.

Writing in Crain’s, Eddie Baeb reports that the new trend is changing the face of greater Chicago:

Companies seeking to tap a broader talent pool and get into the flow of innovation are looking back to the urban core. Sara Lee is only the latest suburban company to seek a new headquarters in downtown Chicago. United Airlines made the move in the past decade, as did Navteq Corp. and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. Some of the most successful local companies of recent years, like Morningstar Inc. and Accretive Health Inc., never left the city.

“The whole corporate campus seems a little dated,” says Joe Mansueto, chairman and CEO of Morningstar, who moved the company’s 1,100 headquarters workers across the Loop to a new office tower at 22 W. Washington St. two years ago without even considering a move to the suburbs. “We’ve always liked being in Chicago. It helps keep employees on the pulse of what’s happening in our society. It keeps them current with cultural trends and possibly technological ones.”

The change has the same far-reaching implications for the region that the suburban stampede of the post-war era had on living and working patterns around Chicago. Well-paying jobs are up in the city, raising questions for the housing market in outer suburbia. New transit challenges will arise as more workers ditch suburb-to-suburb auto commuting and board trains and buses headed downtown.

Baeb’s article also points out that central city locations help recruiting efforts not only with young, urban professionals but also with workers throughout the region: “For most people in greater Chicago, it’s easier to commute downtown than to a suburb on the other side of the metropolitan area.” That, of course, is a textbook illustration of what transportation researchers call “regional (or “destination”) accessibility,” the single most powerful indicator among land-use factors of how far people will drive, on average, over the course of a year. Central locations both facilitate transit access and reduce driving distances.

All this makes even more ridiculous the recent decision of the federal General Services Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to move EPA’s regional headquarters out of downtown Kansas City, Kan., and 20 miles away to a completely automobile-dependent former (natch) corporate headquarters campus across the road from a wheatfield. EPA, of course, is the agency that’s all about sustainable communities these days. Except when it’s not. Will that decision affect recruiting of bright, creative young talent? Time will tell.

Filed under: Cities, Sprawl, Urbanism]]>http://grist.org/sprawl/2011-05-31-is-it-over-for-suburban-corporate-campuses/feed/0office-park-flickr-kevin.jpgOffice park.The man who thinks Manhattan isn’t dense enoughhttp://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-19-the-man-who-thinks-manhattan-isnt-dense-enough/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-19-the-man-who-thinks-manhattan-isnt-dense-enough/#commentsFri, 20 May 2011 00:28:14 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-05-19-the-man-who-thinks-manhattan-isnt-dense-enough/]]>New York City may not be the best example of a place that hasn’t lived up to its potential for greater density.Photo: Randy von LiskiCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

New York County, which comprises all of Manhattan, is the densest county in America at 71,166 people per square mile. It is twice as dense as No. 2, Brooklyn (which, incidentally, is followed by two more New York City counties, Bronx and Queens, at Nos. 3 and 4, respectively). Manhattan is over four times as dense as No. 5 San Francisco.

This makes me wonder about Ed Glaeser, a libertarian economist who is the latest hero of some of my New Urbanist friends, who have been promoting the heck out of his upcoming speech at their annual meeting. Glaeser thinks Manhattan could be so much better if, you know, we just got rid of some of those pesky rules that get in the way of building still more density. I’m not exaggerating, and I’ll give some examples in a minute.

Ed Glaeser.But, first, I want to add some context, because Glaeser has some very important, and valid, points to make about the inherent efficiency of cities. They are essentially the same points made two years ago by David Owen in his book Green Metropolis (and his earlier essay, Green Manhattan): when people are clustered in cities, they take up less space; emit far less energy, particularly from driving; and generate more economic productivity, than they would if spread out. The first two of those are fundamental tenets of smart growth, actually, and my new urbanist friends are not wrong to be glad that Glaeser has joined the chorus. (I agree with the third point, too.) He also supports a carbon tax.

Glaeser’s current book is called The Triumph of the City. It has received a lot of attention and praise, not least because its author is an intellectual who does his homework and packs a lot of detail into his writing. He has also been in the media nonstop, or so it seems, for about a year or so (e.g., The New York Times; NPR; The Atlantic; Neil Peirce’s column for Citiwire; The Next American City; and, yes, Grist). Either Glaeser or his publicist is an awesome promoter, a skill I sometimes wish I had.

He previewed the book in The Atlantic, in an article called “How Skyscrapers Can Save the City.” Here’s Glaeser’s pro-density argument in a nutshell:

The magic of cities comes from their people, but those people must be well served by the bricks and mortar that surround them. Cities need roads and buildings that enable people to live well and to connect easily with one another … in the most desirable cities, whether they’re on the Hudson River or the Arabian Sea, height is the best way to keep prices affordable and living standards high.

It’s basically about efficient use of land, and I agree with much of it, though personally I think there is a lot of room for more density in most American cities and suburbs without making it all about skyscrapers. I also agree, to an extent, with other points Glaeser makes in that article and in the book about overzealous NIMBYs and over-prescriptive zoning.

But here’s the rub: a lot of what makes cities great is not just their efficiency, but the inefficiencies that also make them attractive and livable. Take historic preservation, which seems to really annoy Glaeser:

New York’s vast historic districts, which include thousands of utterly undistinguished structures, don’t accomplish that goal. Worse, they impede new construction, keeping real estate in New York City enormously expensive (despite a housing crash), especially in its most desirable, historically protected areas. It’s time to ask whether New York’s big historic districts make sense.

He doesn’t mention that those “vast historic districts” haven’t prevented Manhattan from becoming over four times as dense as San Francisco, which as noted is America’s densest city outside of the boroughs of New York.

Nor have they prevented the building of some 20 new towers of 400 feet or more in height (roughly 35+ stories) currently under construction in New York City, with many more in the pipeline. (By comparison, Boston only has 27 buildings total of 400 or more feet in height.) Louis J. Coletti of the Building Trades Employers’ Association told The New York Times in 2008 that, immediately prior to the recession, construction generated more than $30 billion in economic activity in New York in one year. Not to say that there isn’t another spot or three where yet another should go, but that doesn’t sound like too much restriction to me.

(Glaeser is not entirely wrong, by the way, to suggest that some buildings preserved as “historic” don’t deserve to be. But that’s a different discussion.)

Homes in coastal California use much less energy than homes in most other places in the country. New building in California, as opposed to Texas, reduces America’s carbon emissions. Yet, instead of fighting to make it easier to build in California, environmentalists have played a significant role in stemming the growth of America’s greenest cities.

Really? Metro San Diego grew 10 percent in the last decade, about the same as the country as a whole; it added 281,000 people. San Jose grew 6 percent, adding over a hundred thousand people. Los Angeles didn’t grow much percentage-wise, but there is no evidence that environmentalism played the slightest role in that; L.A. still added 463,000 people, more than the entire population of the city of Kansas City, Mo..

Look, I know more than most that NIMBYs sometimes wave a faux-environmental flag to oppose development that would actually benefit the environment. I’ve predicated the last two decades of my career to being pro-growth and pro-density in the right places and in the right ways, so I know Glaeser has a point; but, as with so many of his points, he carries it too far.

The truth is that environmental regulation makes cities cleaner, healthier, and more attractive. Metro Portland, with some of the greenest laws anywhere, grew 50 percent faster than the country as a whole in the last decade, in no small part because it’s a great place to live. Metro Portland also illustrates another point about environmentalism: when we protect land outside cities and suburbs, the cities and suburbs become stronger.

Fortunately, some urbanists have begun to parse the nuances in Glaeser’s work. Seattle’s Liz Dunn, for example, notes that what makes the best cities is not tall buildings per se but a granular multiplicity of building styles that foster a diversity of form and function. She is ultimately pro-density, but incrementally:

It isn’t reflected in static measures of square footage or units or building heights, but rather in a slow but steady turning of the dial toward a higher intensity of users, connection and access, resource efficiency, character and identity, and choices. Jane [Jacobs] would no doubt remind us that the critical issue isn’t what density should look like, or how much is enough, but rather how we insert it more surgically and gracefully.

Amen to that. Mike Mehaffy adds that sometimes tower blocks don’t deliver on their claims because of their monolithic nature, and that mid-rise buildings also produce environmental benefits.

I enjoyed my first couple of hours with this book, but the further I read, the more I was dismayed by contradictions that make Triumph of the City less a coherent urban vision than a collection of bombs and barbs tossed at historic preservationists, environmentalists, labor unions, government regulators, mass transit enthusiasts, and other seemingly benighted souls.

Langdon also correctly observes that it is suburbs, not inner cities, that are most in need of adding density.

Tearing down historic edifices to make way for 50-story buildings will do nothing to change the biggest land use issues facing the New York region and other U.S. metropolises.

Agreed.

Before leaving the topic, I want to return to a point I made earlier, because it’s important: Glaeser is right in his central points about cities and density. They are good for both the environment and the economy, so part of me is glad that his views are getting attention. My issue is with the lack of nuance and the failure to give enough credit to the benefits of preservation and environmental protection, both of which enrich our well-being and that of cities.

Oh — and there’s one more point: Manhattan may not be dense enough for Glaeser, but apparently an affluent outer suburb of Boston is. Because that’s where he lives, on six and a half acres.

Filed under: Cities, Smart Cities, Sprawl, Urbanism]]>http://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-19-the-man-who-thinks-manhattan-isnt-dense-enough/feed/0timessquare-flickr-randyvonLiski.jpgnew york is crowdedEdward Glaeser.greenwich villageBringing a dead public plaza to life in Dallashttp://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-18-bringing-a-dead-public-plaza-to-life-in-dallas/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-18-bringing-a-dead-public-plaza-to-life-in-dallas/#commentsThu, 19 May 2011 00:52:38 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-05-18-bringing-a-dead-public-plaza-to-life-in-dallas/]]>Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But I’ll grant that it is imposing. What I don’t like is the vast, forlorn “plaza” and pool that separates the city’s most important civic building from its citizenry and from the street. By all accounts, it’s six acres of dead space, except perhaps when various protests need a place to gather. “A concrete desert,” wrote Ryan Jones on the FrontBurner blog, hosted by DMagazine. “Almost always, without fail, empty.” In fact, looking at the satellite image, one can see that the plaza and city hall are also surrounded by vast surface parking lots. Isolation and vastness compounded by more isolation and vastness.

For at least one day last month, all that changed. The pop-up urbanists who bring us the very cool Better Block projects, which also originated in Dallas, partnered with the CityDesign Studio of Dallas, the Trinity Trust, and other partners and supporters, to create “Living Plaza,” a project to show what the City Hall Plaza could be like with a little more energy and imagination. For about $1,500 plus volunteer labor, the project brought chairs, tables, games, music, and food to the space — you know, like some cities have all the time.

Team Better Block, alongside the bcWorkshop, CityDesignStudio, Trinity Trust, Downtown Dallas Inc., Modern Relics, and others helped transform Dallas City Hall’s barren and lifeless plaza into an active, livable environment. The groups brought out a storage container converted into a food commissary where Jaime’s Tamales, Oak Cliff Crepe Company, and Brady’s BBQ set up shop to provide food for all who came onsite. An assortment of tables and chairs were also spread out alongside plants, trees, checkerboards, giant chess sets, and more. Our recycled pallet wood benches and trellises also helped frame the stage as city employees, council members, and area business people all came out to enjoy the day.

It was a hit. “I feel like I’m in Austin right now,” downtown worker Kalye Johnson told a local TV station. “I really like the air and everything about it. I think it’s cool — very different.”

Right now some 1,500 people are working right next door to the plaza, yet few use it. Something, patently, is wrong and needs to be set right …

There was remarkable concurrence on the main points: more events, more trees and grass and greenery, more places to sit, something to sit under, food and tables and chairs …

There should be much more seating on the plaza; it should be more comfortable; and it should be sited in relation to sun and shade and to the configurations people find most congenial.

Put out movable chairs …

More events should be scheduled …

Do more with the pool. It is a fine feature and artfully designed to be safe for wading. So why not have wading? And splashing about …

On an April Wednesday, during workers’ lunch hour, the appeal of Whyte’s vision was demonstrated.

Well, maybe not the splashing about. Part of the plan was to have kids’ toy boats floating in the pool, something like the little sailboats in Paris’s wonderful Jardin du Luxembourg. There was a problem with the boat supplier. But there was another problem anyway, according to Roy Appleton, writing for the Dallas Morning News:

But then there was the plan for floating small boats yesterday in the plaza pool. OK, the group that was supposed to supply the craft backed out. But if they had been there, the city permit office told organizers they couldn’t put no stinking boats in the pool because by golly such behavior hadn’t been stipulated in the event application. Ah, some things never change.

That noted, there may be some good news from Dallas’s officialdom. After the Living Plaza event, some city council members said City Hall Plaza could be a future expansion location for mobile food vendors, according to a post by Ken Kalthoff on the NBC Dallas-Fort Worth website. Apparently the council has already approved a measure to allow food trucks in the city’s Arts District.

Here’s some local TV coverage of the event:

There’s also a nice video of the Living Plaza event produced by the Dallas publication the Advocate:

Filed under: Cities, Urbanism]]>http://grist.org/urbanism/2011-05-18-bringing-a-dead-public-plaza-to-life-in-dallas/feed/0dallasplaza-screenshot.jpgDallas City Hallempty Dallas plaza11 U.S. cities honored as ‘walk-friendly': Seattle ranks firsthttp://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-05-04-11-u-s-cities-honored-as-walk-friendly-seattle-ranks-first/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-05-04-11-u-s-cities-honored-as-walk-friendly-seattle-ranks-first/#commentsThu, 05 May 2011 05:27:52 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-05-04-11-u-s-cities-honored-as-walk-friendly-seattle-ranks-first/]]>Seattle got the “platinum” ranking for its efforts to make the city more walkable.Photo: chrissudermanCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Walk Friendly Communities is a new, national recognition program developed to encourage towns and cities across the U.S. to place a high priority on supporting safer walking environments. Regular readers know that I write a lot about walkability, because it expresses so many things we look for in sustainable places: health and fitness, a richness of destinations within walking distance, street connectivity, sidewalks, even a sense of community and place. A neighborhood or community whose residents, workers, and visitors find it useful, convenient, safe, and pleasant to walk, and do so regularly, is likely to be environmentally friendly in other ways as well.

The PBIC said in a press release that community leaders can learn best practices just by participating in the application process. Applicants use a web-based program that asks a comprehensive set of questions and provides communities with feedback and ideas for promoting pedestrian safety and activity. The questions examine engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement, evaluation, and planning. The Walk Friendly Community designation, awarded from bronze to platinum and modeled after the League of American Bicyclists’ “Bicycle Friendly Communities” designations, is given to applicants “that have demonstrated a commitment to improving and sustaining walkability and pedestrian safety through comprehensive programs, plans and policies.”

I should note that the list of honorees emphasizes places that are making commendable policy efforts to encourage walking (and that applied for the recognition), rather than communities that are more organically hospitable to walking. Boston and Washington, for example, which have the nation’s highest walking mode shares for commuters, are not on the list. That’s OK with me — we need a program that recognizes policy.

In a document profiling the honorees [PDF], PBIC saluted top-ranking Seattle, for example, for a comprehensive set of measures that includes collecting data through biennial pedestrian counts, developing a pedestrian master plan with performance measures, giving attention to parking management, planting street trees, fostering safe routes to school, calming traffic, and more. Santa Barbara was honored for “strong connectivity policies, a model Safe Routes to School program, and its unique pedestrian-oriented “paseos” (pedestrian-oriented shopping streets). Hoboken was designated for, among other things, “daylighting” its intersections.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center is maintained by the University of North Carolina’s Highway Safety Research Center with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. Officially launched in Oct. 2010, the Walk Friendly Community program is funded by FedEx and the Federal Highway Administration.

The program is accepting applications now for its second round of awards, with the deadline for submission on June 15, 2011. Interested communities are encouraged to visit www.walkfriendly.org to learn more about the program and review the community assessment tool.

In a related matter, I just this week received multiple announcements of an online “National Walking Survey” sponsored by the organization America Walks. The survey seems a bit geared toward people who might walk for pleasure or fitness rather than for utility; only a few of the questions have to do with the built environment or the kinds of things that the Walk Friendly Communities program seeks to encourage. I might like to see, for example, “Which of the following places, if any, do you walk to on a regular basis?” or “Would you walk to the bank/restaurant/whatever if you could reach it safely within 10 minutes?” or “Is there a public park or playground near your home or job? How often do you visit it? How do you get there?”

Transportation research indicates that these factors can be hugely influential. Still, maybe the survey will elicit some useful information; go here if you would like to participate.

In defiance of the environmental values it supposedly stands for, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is moving its regional headquarters from a walkable, transit-rich, downtown Kansas City (Kan.) neighborhood to one of the worst examples of suburban sprawl it could have possibly found, some 20 miles from downtown. The result could nearly triple transportation carbon emissions associated with the facility.

In addition, around 600 federal and associated civilian employees will abandon a central city at a time when the agency’s own staff is writing reports suggesting that central cities in the U.S. are making a comeback. Kansas City, Kan. (population 145,786), is much smaller than neighboring Kansas City, Mo.; the loss of 600 downtown jobs is a major blow to the city’s efforts to strengthen its core.

This decision is horrible in so many ways that it’s hard to know where to start. How the hell did EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sign off on this?

Let’s look at the facts. The satellite image above shows the location of the current Region 7 headquarters in downtown Kansas City, Kansas. It’s not perfect when viewed through a smart growth and sustainable communities lens, but it’s not bad.

Now consider the new location, a low-rise “landscraper” of a building fronted by large parking lots outside of a suburb called Lenexa, and across the road from, among other things, a wheatfield.

I ran the addresses for the current and new facilities through Walk Score and Abogo, the calculator developed by the Center for Neighborhood Technology that estimates carbon emissions (and household costs) from transportation by location. Above, the EPA’s current headquarters location gets a Walk Score of 62, better than 81 percent of Kansas City as a whole. You can see the locations of nearby amenities on the Walk Score map, which also identifies six bus transit lines within a quarter mile walk of the facility.

Abogo calculates that an average resident in the vicinity of the current EPA Region 7 headquarters emits 0.39 metric tons of carbon dioxide per month, slightly more than half the regional average of 0.74 tons per month. Symbolically, it’s a great location for an agency that is attempting to address global warming. All that yellow and green on the map indicates that the average transportation costs associated with residences in the area are below the regional average.

(Abogo doesn’t directly calculate emissions and costs associated with commercial and civic facilities, but one can extrapolate that the differences between good- and poor-performing locations would be even greater because of the number of visitors associated with commercial and civic locations.)

Now let’s compare the same calculations and maps for the sprawl site to which the EPA intends to move. The Walk Score is only a “car-dependent” 28. That is not only far below that of the downtown location and the average for Kansas City sites; it is also far below the average even for the fringe suburb of Lenexa, 86 percent of whose residents are said to have a higher score. You could see all the nearby amenities on the Walk Score map — if there were any. Sheesh.

But, wait, it gets worse. Abogo calculates that the transportation carbon emissions associated with the new location are a whopping 1.08 metric tons per person per month. That’s nearly three times the average associated with the current location and one and a half times the regional average. This is not just some random corporation making a crappy location decision: This is the agency charged with protecting the environment for the United States of America.

(Ironically, EPA’s new regional headquarters did, in fact, recently belong to a corporation. The agency apparently decided that, if the site was once good enough for Applebee’s corporate honchos, it’s good enough for us.)

When the EPA joined the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation in the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, I applauded them. When the partnership issued its first-year report of achievement amidst an impressive array of actions to support local sustainability efforts, I applauded them again. Here’s one of the six core “livability principles” that the EPA pledged to uphold as a participant in the partnership:

Support existing communities. Target federal funding toward existing communities — through strategies like transit-oriented, mixed-use development, and land recycling — to increase community revitalization and the efficiency of public works investments and safeguard rural landscapes.

How’s that promise to support transit-oriented, mixed-use development, and community revitalization looking now, Administrator Jackson?

As for the commitment to “safeguard rural landscapes,” the area of sprawling office space where the EPA will be relocating is, in fact, rapidly converting agricultural land to pavement. Directly across the road from the EPA facility is another low-rise office park whose building footprint is dwarfed by the size of surface parking built to accommodate it. But adjacent to that property is farmland.

And it’s not just the principles of the sustainability partnership that the agency has decided to ignore. The EPA is also thumbing its nose at a series of federal executive orders that clearly establish government policy with regard to facilities location. In particular, on Oct. 5, 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13514 [PDF], “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance.” That order makes it the policy of the United States of America for federal agencies to “reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions from direct and indirect activities.” As shown above, this move will increase those emissions, not reduce them.

More specifically with regard to the siting of federal facilities, the order establishes mechanisms to accomplish the following:

“Ensuring that planning for new Federal facilities or new leases includes consideration of sites that are pedestrian-friendly, near existing employment centers, and accessible to public transit, and emphasizes existing central cities and, in rural communities, existing or planned town centers”

“The recommendations shall be consistent with principles of sustainable development including prioritizing central business district and rural town center locations, prioritizing sites well served by transit, including site design elements that ensure safe and convenient pedestrian access, consideration of transit access and proximity to housing affordable to a wide range of Federal employees, adaptive reuse or renovation of buildings, avoidance of development of sensitive land resources, and evaluation of parking management strategies.”

Silly me, I had assumed that the EPA actually had something to do with drafting this order for the President to consider and sign. Now I wonder if the agency has even bothered to read it.

If this matter is litigated, which I’m starting to think might not be a bad idea, could the EPA’s lawyers find loopholes enabling the agency to avoid the intent of the order? Maybe. But the fact that the nation’s most important environmental institution would be resorting to find reasons to escape sustainability practices that both it and the nation’s chief executive have indicated are important says all we need to know about what a mockery of principle this decision is.

And that’s not the only relevant executive order, by the way. Then-President Clinton signed Executive Order 13006, “encouraging the location of Federal facilities in our central cities.” Then-President Carter issued Executive Order 12072, requiring federal location decisions to “conserve existing urban resources and encourage the development and redevelopment of cities” and “give first consideration to a centralized community business area and adjacent areas of similar character.” These directives, as with President Obama’s, are still in effect. (Even then-President Nixon issued an order to “protect and enhance the cultural environment” through historic preservation.)

Officials in Kansas City are not happy about the EPA’s abandonment of downtown, as you might imagine. Neither is former Kansas senator and GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, who helped Kansas City secure the building that now houses the Region 7 staff and was built specifically for them. Dole, who now represents the owners of the downtown building, pointed to its importance to the city’s revitalization in an opinion column in the Kansas City Star:

The EPA building, which remains in pristine condition, has anchored the revitalization and growth of downtown Kansas City, driving out much of the blight and crime that once plagued this community. About 550 federal government employees and 122 private employees work at Region VII headquarters.

Several years ago the EPA, making a further commitment to Kansas City, located its technical laboratory a block from headquarters to facilitate operations and movement of employees between the offices …

The federal government should also contemplate the effects a move will have on Kansas City. Traditionally the federal government has supported choosing urban sites for federal facilities taking into consideration the economic, social, and cultural conditions, public transportation, and the economic development and employment opportunities in the area.

Put another way, insofar as this matter is concerned, Bob Dole appears to care more about urban sustainability than the Obama administration’s EPA. (See more coverage of the opposition to EPA’s decision here, here, and here.)

A second argument advanced in favor of the sprawl site is, ironically, that the former Applebee’s building is LEED-certified, while the current building, which was built to then-prevailing green standards in 1998 but predates LEED, is not. If that is the real reason, it more than anything else I have come across illustrates the perversity of LEED building standards that largely ignore the environmental consequences of location. Research shows that transportation energy use and emissions of purportedly green buildings, when they are placed in sprawl, wipe out any benefits conferred by the technology of the buildings themselves. I’ve written about that repeatedly.

The building is situated on a brownfield site and was planned from the beginning to serve as a model for economically and environmentally sustainable building practices.

Every aspect of this building’s design, construction, operation, and maintenance was considered for sustainable applications and practices. Water conservation is achieved through native landscaping and low-flow interior fixtures. Building materials were selected for their recycled content and their contribution to a healthy indoor environment. Strategies for energy conservation range from siting decisions and the use of daylighting to efficient HVAC components.

The owner of the downtown building has said that it is willing to obtain LEED-gold certification for the building’s operation and maintenance, at its own expense, within a year.

In today’s rancorous political climate, conservatives charge that the federal government’s interest in sustainability is basically a statist plot to force Americans into a lifestyle that they don’t want. To them I say, rest easy, my friends; go back to fighting that other statist plot, decent health care for all Americans. You have absolutely nothing to fear from this one.

Amazingly, in this case it is by ignoring sustainability that the government may be forcing its employees into a lifestyle and increased costs that they likely do not want. The much-heralded government interest in sustainability not only is not forcing ordinary Americans to do anything: It isn’t even having an effect on the government’s own practices.

Filed under: Cities, Infrastructure, Sprawl, Urbanism]]>http://grist.org/sprawl/2011-04-18-epa-chooses-sprawl-over-urban-sustainability/feed/0epa-kansascitybuilding.jpgdowntown EPA headquarterssuburban EPA headquartersAre ‘smart cities’ not as smart as they think they are?http://grist.org/smart-cities/2011-03-03-is-there-a-downside-to-intelligent-cities-or-smart-cities/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/smart-cities/2011-03-03-is-there-a-downside-to-intelligent-cities-or-smart-cities/#commentsFri, 04 Mar 2011 01:27:07 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-03-is-there-a-downside-to-intelligent-cities-or-smart-cities/]]>Smart cities like Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, are all the rage. But are they intelligent in the right way?Photo: Trevor PattCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“Intelligent cities” and “smart cities” are all the rage right now, especially in corporate image advertising related to emerging technology. But is there a downside?

I think there may be, insofar as those phrases are used to describe tech-based panaceas for urban problems whose roots lie not in a lack of sophisticated information flow, but in a half-century or more of dumb growth patterns, central-city disinvestment, and poor neighborhood design.

Just a couple of days ago, I mentioned the clearly discernible trend of large, multinational corporations working to get ahead of the sustainability curve and position themselves as leaders in 21st-century management systems that can help cities. This is mostly a very good thing, since more forward thinking by corporations about solving our environmental and social problems can indeed help. Many of us have already seen how smart-phone apps of various kinds, real-time information at transit stops, and tech-based tools like Google Earth and Walk Score have empowered planners, civic leaders, and ordinary people like you and me to live and work better. More of this is to be applauded.

But futuristic technology won’t fix many of our basic urban problems, any more than “gizmo green” add-ons to buildings will overcome the unsustainability inherent in lousy building locations or lousy architecture. Sprawl will still be sprawl; disinvestment will still be disinvestment; traffic will still be traffic; sprawl-aided obesity will still be obesity.

The Gizmo Green focus allows us to ignore huge essential facets of sustainability that have nothing to do with equipment or materials. For example, why are we even discussing the carbon footprint of a building if it is built somewhere that requires you to drive everywhere? Or what is the value of the carbon footprint of a building once its parts are carted off to the landfill because it could not be loved?

I believe the very same principles apply to “gizmo cities.”

So forgive me if I think some of the marketing for this mostly-good gadgetry is over the top, and if I find to be dangerous the claims of some that the more trendy phrasing and theory of “intelligent cities” is beginning to displace that of now-mainstream “smart growth.” Whether we call more compact and logical regional growth patterns, more accessible and efficient public transit, and more walkable neighborhood design “smart growth” or “urbanism” or something else, we still need to do it and not let ourselves be seduced into thinking that the problems are being addressed adequately or better by technology. They are not.

Although many such products sound useful, this feels like part of the “technology will save us” movement, which in its worst moments, uses up city funds while giving cities “permission” not to make the hard choices that will really work to make us more resilient and successful. This seems more common in America than elsewhere, where the feeling that the marketplace will respond and provide products to fix problems still has resonance.

At a conference late last year in Spain, I found myself on panels discussing new technologies that will improve cities, surrounded by tech-company reps hard-pitching to a global audience. I likely disappointed them, by stating that in my opinion the “technologies” that will do the most good, are not new — compact, mixed-use, walkable communities; bikes, separated bike lanes, and bike sharing; transit; small scale innovation like wheeled luggage; simple techniques that we’ve forgotten like passive building design; or globally-understood tech like district/neighborhood energy based on renewable resources. But those big companies weren’t selling those products. They were selling smart city solutions.

Vancouver has had the benefit of good planning now for some time, and there is little question that the city has been doing something right: Scoring 140 cities worldwide on 30 key factors, The Economist just named it the most livable city in the world, for the third straight year. I’m sure Brent wouldn’t claim credit for that (nor would he deserve all of it), but the work of his office is absolutely a contributing factor in making his city more hospitable and functional.

I am certainly not opposed to technology. I’m writing this on a high-powered computer, whose broadband connection and interface with Google just enabled me quickly to track down Steve’s and Brent’s quotes, plug them into this narrative, and store the whole thing to a flash drive, so later I can plug this post into NRDC’s blogging software. When it’s published, I’ll let my Facebook friends and Twitter followers know. Long live high-tech, say I. But, in the meantime, let’s don’t forget the basics.

Take one part Paducah (arts-driven revitalization), one part Old North Saint Louis (incremental restoration of abandoned historic properties), mix in some serious winter weather, and you might just come out with something a lot like the Syracuse (NY) SALT District, an ambitious and fascinating arts-and-technology-driven revitalization effort.

According to the project’s web site, the initiative is aimed at nothing less than creating “a new epicenter of artistic and cultural development in the Syracuse and Central Upstate New York area.” It is being led by the Near West Side Initiative, Inc.

A district for art and culture

The SALT District takes its name from an acronym of Syracuse, Art, Life, and Technology. There is also historical association to the name, in that the neighborhood was once home to a salt works in Syracuse’s early industrial history, and Syracuse has been referred to as the Salt City since those early days. Reflecting that history, Salina Street runs through downtown Syracuse.

The SALT District comprises older warehouses and commercial buildings along West Street and parts of West Fayette Street, on the edges of the neighborhood (see map). New warehouse-type spaces are also being developed along West Street as part of the initiative. In addition, abandoned single-family houses and small properties suitable for mixed uses in the heart of the neighborhood are being rehabilitated and targeted for ownership and development by artists. All of these houses and new warehouse spaces have incentive programs available to lower the cost of ownership, increase community support, and allow artists to participate in the value they are creating in the neighborhood.

The district is located directly west of Syracuse’s traditional downtown, within easy walking distance of the landmark Armory Square and the rest of downtown.

Among the program’s incentives are full exterior rehabs of vacant properties suitable for use as studios and live/work spaces, made available at affordable for-sale prices to buyers who commit to upgrading the interiors, remaining three years, and developing a business plan. Additional homes and properties are being made available as-is for a dollar. And there are also fully rehabbed properties available at attractive prices.

There is no doubt that the program has a critical mass of arts-related activity upon which to build. According to the website, more than 60 artists are already working and living in warehouses with loft spaces and studios along West Fayette Street. The neighborhood also has become home to the pioneering Delavan Center (hosting several galleries), the Redhouse Arts Center (theater, film, music), Syracuse University’s Warehouse (with its School of Visual and Performing Arts and School of Architecture), Clayscapes Pottery, and several other businesses.

Earning recognition as a green neighborhood

All this is laudable enough, but the SALT District also can now be called not just an artistic neighborhood but also a green one. Or, more specifically, green and gold, since the neighborhood has earned certification at the gold level pursuant to the LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system. While LEED-ND — like most green building rating systems — was designed to guide projects where the majority of square footage will be new construction and major renovations, the SALT District shows that the rating system also includes valuable sustainability metrics for existing neighborhoods.

In particular, the 156-acre district sits south of a once-burgeoning industrial port along the old Erie Canal. It has suffered from significant disinvestment over the last several decades, resulting in vacant properties, gaps and barriers in the street and walking network, and high rates of unemployment and poverty. Yet the SALT District remains a centrally located, historic neighborhood with a traditional neighborhood layout, already exhibiting many of the characteristics rewarded in the LEED-ND rating system. It has an in-town location that reduces driving trips and distances while allowing reuse of existing infrastructure. It has a mix of turn-of-the century housing and flexible commercial space. It has a school and community park at its center. It has well-connected and walkable streets. And it has proximity to a high number of jobs.

The 100-year-old Lincoln Supply Warehouse was turned into 30,000 square feet of mixed-used commercial and residential space.Illustration: SALT DistrictTaking advantage of these readymade assets, a coalition of neighborhood partners — including residents and community groups, the Syracuse Center of Excellence, Home Headquarters affordable housing development, the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, and the City of Syracuse — have created a plan for the SALT District that successfully earned LEED-ND certification. The plan features extensive reuse and rehabilitation of existing buildings, energy and water efficiency retrofits in existing buildings, redevelopment in targeted locations, and green building requirements for new construction.

It also includes several new streets and pedestrian facilities to connect better to surrounding areas, improved transit service and facilities, multiple new parks, enhanced stormwater management, and protection of the neighborhood’s creek and floodplain. The neighborhood will continue to feature a diversity of housing types and affordability levels, enabling a wide array of people to call it home.

That’s a lot, no? According to the website of the Center of Excellence, the Near Westside Initiative is specifically intended “to decrease energy use in homes and increase indoor air quality; help find environmentally-friendly solutions to storm water management; promote deconstruction practices; and create green collar jobs.” (Read more about the district’s green aspirations here.)

“We believe we’ve created a blueprint for the SALT District’s future while advancing the practice of sustainability and neighborhood planning at a national level,” says Ed Bogucz, executive director of the Syracuse Center of Excellence and one of the early champions of the project.

The work of the Near Westside initiative in restoring the neighborhood has been recognized as a human achievement as well as an artistic and environmental one. In 2010, the project received the 2010 InterFaith Leadership Award from InterFaith Works of Central New York. Beth Broadway, Interfaith’s executive director, had this to say to the initiative’s leaders:

With leadership, dedication and love, you are working to strengthen neighborhoods and create a new community spirit that embraces diversity, celebrates the promise that exists in each of us and promotes positive change in ourselves and in the places we live and work together. Through your friendship and partnership, you are helping our neighbors in Central New York see what is possible and encouraging them to work toward achieving their dreams. Your work and the work of the Near Westside initiative are building a community where residents are empowered and where each individual’s dignity and respect is strengthened by the warmth and affection of their neighbors.

(Now would be an appropriate time for applause.)

LEED-ND process and team

The SALT District project provides a replicable model for using LEED-ND to guide investment in existing neighborhoods across the country. In a post two weeks ago, we outlined the basic steps for using the system to green an older neighborhood:

Assess the neighborhood: Audit the neighborhood using the LEED-ND prerequisites and credits. This can range from a quick audit performed in an afternoon to an in-depth evaluation, depending on your needs.

Focus on strengths and weaknesses: Identify areas where the neighborhood performs well under LEED-ND and where it does not.

Respond with a plan: Propose retrofits, targeted redevelopment, infrastructure improvements, or policies for the future that build on the neighborhood’s strengths and address its weaknesses. The level of detail and effort can vary widely — from an informal list of suggestions to a detailed design and policy proposal that becomes the backbone of a neighborhood plan.

That’s exactly what was done here, with very promising results.

The SALT District LEED for Neighborhood Development project was managed by Raimi + Associates of Berkeley, Calif. The design phase of the project involved a design charrette that included Opticos Design of Berkeley, Calif.; Jessica Millman from the Agora Group, of Skaneateles, N.Y.; and Northeast Green Building Consulting, of Syracuse, N.Y..

A video treat

Finally, we leave you with an engaging and fun video featuring some of the artists who are making the SALT District such a great story to tell:

Aaron Welch, an urban planner with Raimi + Associates who helped guide the SALT District to green certification under LEED for Neighborhood Development. Aaron was kind enough to allow me to borrow from his article about the project for an update on LEED-ND, published last month by the U.S. Green Building Council.

So much for the widely-touted concept of “transit-ready” development. The residents of an acclaimed New Urbanist village built around planned light rail (or bus rapid transit) stops have decided that they don’t actually want the transit their community was designed for. So let’s be more careful about the claims we make for master-planned suburban development, shall we?

God, that paragraph sounds like something straight out of The Onion. But it’s real.

The developer and designers of King Farm, a 440-acre community in the outer suburbs of Washington, D.C., certainly tried to get it right. Other than the dubious practice of naming a suburb after the farms that it paves over (there’s also a road called “Rolling Fields Way” running through the heart of the development; I swear I’m not making this up), this attractive development, as conceived, would have gotten lots of praise from me, had I reviewed it. On what became an infill site after sprawl gobbled up everything around it, not far from the last stop on the Washington Metro system’s Red Line, and with mixed uses, a variety of housing types, walkable design, fixed-guideway transit planned through the center, and excellent density for a suburb, King Farm’s concept represented what I promote in this blog and in my work all the time.

It did get lots of praise from others, especially for its transit-oriented design. Bestowing a prestigious Charter Award on the development, the Congress for the New Urbanism called it “one of the most exciting projects” among the candidates. CNU’s web site includes this passage:

The town is designed around a light rail line linking the town center to the subway station. Similar to Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, the light rail will be built along the principal boulevard. The town square, town center neighborhood and the office neighborhood are located along this street and mark the proposed stops on the rail line.

As a high-density, walkable, mixed-use community, King Farm in Rockville, Maryland, takes full advantage of the wide variety of current and future transportation choices at or near the site … A proposed Corridor Cities Transitway will provide light rail or bus rapid transit from the Metro station, through King Farm, continuing through Gaithersburg, Clarksburg and possibly all the way to Frederick, Maryland.”

King Farm Boulevard, running through the heart of the community, was designed with an extra-wide median specifically to accommodate transit vehicles. Two stops have long been planned in the development for the Transitway. They are marked in red on the map and satellite image below. (Note that, although alternative alignments for the route have been studied, all options include the two King Farm stations.) On the Google Earth image, the transit route is shown in blue/green, linking up with the Metro line shown in red. Both light rail and BRT are under consideration.

Well, the Transitway is going to be built. The government authorities are in the process of deciding the details. But, after listening to the NIMBY complaints of King Farm residents who are just fine with driving their cars and apparently see transit as blight rather than benefit, the Rockville City Council just voted 4-1 to route the transit corridor around, rather than through, the walkable development of 3,200 homes along with commercial space.

Writing on the excellent local blog Greater Greater Washington, Dan Reed reports that a resident founded the “Coalition for the Preservation of King Farm” after realizing that transit vehicles could run in front of her condominium on King Farm Boulevard. She says that she was never told about the transit that the development was built for. Sean Patrick Norris reports in the Rockville Gazette that “the group is worried about the effect construction will have on traffic, parking, pedestrian safety, and buildings.” (Does anyone else see an irony in something called the Coalition to Preserve King Farm when 90 percent of the real King Farm no longer exists, because the coalition founder’s condo is sitting on top of it?)

City Councilmember Piotr Gajewski, a King Farm resident who apparently saw no need to recuse himself from the matter before casting a number of votes on it, reportedly said that the Corridor Cities Transitway would bring “no benefits” to the neighborhood while being “incredibly disruptive.” In an article written by Cindy Cotte Griffiths, the local news site Rockville Central quotes Gajewski as saying he “unequivocally opposes light rail because it is only possible if it goes down the median of King Farm Boulevard,” the street that was specifically designed from the beginning to accommodate it.

How’s that retrofitting suburbia concept looking now?

See, the thing is, we need the transit to make these big suburban developments work for the larger region’s traffic and for the environment. King Farm is not an inner suburb. It’s about 10 miles beyond the Capital Beltway and 21.6 miles from NRDC’s downtown D.C. office, according to Google Maps. There’s a shuttle to the Metro station, another thing the developer did right, but that only helps if you’re going where the Red Line goes, basically only south from the station since it’s the end of the line.

For those who live, work or shop along its route, the Transitway will not only make it easier to reach the Metro (or to reach King Farm from the Metro) at more times during the day, but also run along more of an east-west route, linking its customers to additional centers of employment and activity. A majority of King Farm residents and visitors will probably still drive. But that’s OK, because even small mode shifts make a difference for the environment and, over time, ridership grows as newcomers who are attracted by the transit move in to the development; that’s how it works.

But, if the residents see “no benefit,” what’s the point of designing for transit, exactly? (I know: rhetorical questions are coming fast and furious today.)

To their credit, the residents of another iconic new urbanist development, the nearby Kentlands, are reportedly enthusiastic about the Transitway and are advocating that it be light rail rather than BRT, according to Reed’s post. Good for them.

But, as to King Farm, I think there’s a lesson here. “Transit-oriented” or “transit-ready” may not mean squat if the transit isn’t fully committed. If the line isn’t built through the development, King Farm will still be a lot better than the sprawl that surrounds it, but it won’t be all that we said it would when we were passing out those awards. And, next time we give out awards, we should be more careful with our praise.

Meanwhile, the final decision will be made by the governor. Expect the NIMBY chorus to get louder.

To qualify, each affordable housing grant applicant had to demonstrate efforts to strengthen surrounding neighborhoods, a commitment to engage stakeholders in the development process, and the provision of green housing for a range of income levels. Grant winners were selected from a pool of applicants by a jury of affordable housing and smart growth experts.

Funding for Affordable Green Neighborhoods is part of a broader two-year grant being provided by the Bank of America Charitable Foundation to USGBC, which administers LEED-ND. The $500,000 grant also provides educational resources and training to school districts to assist certification under LEED for Existing Buildings for Schools, which rewards schools that retrofit their facilities to green standards.

The Affordable Green Neighborhoods grant recipients represent a diversity of project types and locations across the country:

These awardees include needed revitalization efforts located in some badly distressed areas. For example, according to the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), South Boston’s Old Colony development is the most physically distressed site in the agency’s federally assisted housing portfolio. Built in 1940, the project’s building systems and infrastructure are now seriously aged, with low-income residents currently facing an annual energy and water cost of over $4,000 per unit. The site is also one of BHA’s largest, comprising 873 apartments in 22 three-story, brick walk-up buildings, on more than 16 acres. But the location is excellent for redevelopment, within walking distance of a variety of shops, services, and recreation opportunities, along with bus lines and a free shuttle to the nearby Red Line rail transit system.

There is a city library branch on the property. With the assistance of a federal stimulus grant, BHA has initiated a public-private partnership to begin a long term transformation of the site. Phase one includes some 150 new units of housing in a variety of housing types, along with a new community center. The recently approved phase two will include up to 170 more housing units, including a mix of four-story elevator buildings and clusters of three-story townhomes. The site design optimizes walkable streets, open spaces and green stormwater infrastructure.

A major emphasis of the Old Colony redevelopment will be the inclusion of energy efficiency measures, with the goal of eventually providing on-site renewable energy generation sufficient to offset all of the project’s building energy consumption. The Community Center, as the focal point for neighborhood gatherings and programs, will showcase the green elements of the project’s structure and systems, with additional visual, educational displays about sustainability and conservation. Resident self-sufficiency services will be provided for job connection and training, education, and wellness.

In the Watts district of Los Angeles, the Jordan Downs housing project was the scene of race riots in the 1960s, and later became “notorious” for being home to the city’s “Crips” street gang. The city is turning the site into a mixed-income, mixed-use, walkable neighborhood that will include a model, cutting-edge campus for the neighborhood’s Jordan High School.

Clackamas Heights is the oldest public housing property in the state of Oregon and currently provides housing for 222 residents, including 95 children. Current units have reached the end of their useful life. The buildings lack foundations, have severe structural deficiencies, and cannot meet ADA compliance. The city hired one of the country’s best sustainable architecture firms, Seattle’s Mithun, to reconceive the project.

The new concept proposes 283 units that will utilize land more efficiently through an improved site design that will connect residents with the surrounding community, providing better access to services and activities. It also provides enhanced amenities for both residents of the Heights and the surrounding neighborhood. “The Affordable Green Neighborhoods grant will provide the financial support to successfully complete the Clackamas Heights Redevelopment in a highly green and sustainable manner,” said Mary Bradshaw, project manager for the Clackamas Heights Redevelopment Housing Authority, in a press release [PDF].

No aspect of smart growth appeals to me more than inclusive, sustainable revitalization of distressed neighborhoods. These projects will now be designed to LEED-ND standards, and major props are due to the Bank of America and USGBC for helping them offset the significant costs that can be associated with LEED-ND registration and documentation. To learn more about the Affordable Green Neighborhoods Grant Program, go here.

The median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. was around 2,300 square feet in 2007, and crept up to around 2,500 by 2008. But today, the median home size has dropped to 2,100 square feet, writes Cindy Perlman in USA Today.

Are McMansions going the way of the Hummer? Not entirely, I suspect, but I do think demand for them is dropping, as the numbers suggest.

Another indication that Americans are getting a bit more sensible is that the industry magazine Builder, which annually features a concept home at a large industry show in Las Vegas, this year selected a 1,700-square-foot model to represent a high-quality product for today’s market. Titled “A Home for the New Economy” (the name is a bit of a downer, if you ask me), the model eliminated the formal living room that no one uses anymore, reduced excess hall space, and featured rooms that could have multiple functions, such as office/guest room. It also featured a flexible suite that could either be integrated into the rest of the space or used as separate quarters for rental or relatives who wanted their own entrance and a bit of privacy.

Perlman also notes that today’s new homes are much more likely to be community-oriented than their recent predecessors:

[T]he front porch is back. Builders are increasingly moving the garage to the back of the house and adding a big porch on the front.

Seeing a big porch through the dining room, and a shared green space beyond that adds to the illusion that you are getting more — and it makes you want to get out there and reconnect with your neighbors.

At the height of the market it was all about “suburban sprawl,” with everyone in their backyards, with their own deck, their own swingset, their own pool — and barely knowing their neighbors. Today, the buzz word is “smart growth” — smaller, more sustainable communities that really have a sense of community …

The concept may seem off-putting to some, who may not think they want to know their neighbors. But there’s a sense of community [in Denver’s new urbanist Stapleton neighborhood] that you scarcely find elsewhere, with passersby saying hello to families on the porch and making plans to head out to a pocket park to play, or attend a free concert or movie in the park.

“People have just accepted the tradeoff,” said Denise Gammon, a vice president at Stapleton’s developer, Forest City Enterprises. “They think, I don’t have a big, private yard, but boy do I have this amazing range of open space that’s completely accessible to me,” she explained.

Boyce Thompson, editorial director at Builder, told Perlman that today’s customers are also concerned about energy efficiency. Perlman writes that among the energy-smart options you may see down the road are master controls for a home’s energy efficiency (much like the master control for the lights, heat, and stereo) and even private wind turbines in the back yard. The New Economy Home also takes advantage of opportunities to save on construction costs:

The small and simple footprint is based on standard dimensional lumber to minimize cutting on site. Plumbing fixtures are grouped in centralized locations to simplify plumbing installation and reduce consumption. The building envelope and construction details merge the latest technologies in green building with common sense details that maximize the value of sun and water, while minimizing the load they place on the mechanical systems. Every set of plans comes with a full materials list and product specifications.

The New Economy Home responds to the realities of our time with a design that is economical to build, efficient to maintain and adaptable over time. But just as importantly, it is comfortable to live in and attractive to look at. Living within our means does not have to mean trading down, it can and hopefully will, mean trading up and making our lives better.

This pond at Baldwin Park (Orlando) captures stormwater while providing a terrific community amenity.Photo: EPA Smart GrowthGreen landscaping features also stand out. It’s a bit hard to see at this scale, but the concept rendering in the image at the top of the post for the New Economy Home shows pervious surface for the driveway, which will reduce stormwater runoff. The pond in Baldwin Park (Orlando), shown to the right, also captures stormwater while providing a terrific community amenity. Simultaneous with the USA Today article, Perlman posted a slide show with accompanying narrative on CNBC.com, which features examples from Stapleton and Baldwin Park, emphasizing their green features, community amenities and walkable town centers.

I’m going to start by being deliberatively provocative: “Cities” don’t matter nearly as much as we sometimes suggest. I surround the word with quotation marks, because I am talking about cities as municipalities with legal boundaries — which is not, by the way, how most people use the word. And that’s where we can get into trouble when it comes to policy.

I know that’s a bit over the top. Of course, cities matter. But in what sense? It is important to be careful about vocabulary and about statistics.

Let me give an example: A friend in the business of growth management recently returned from a meeting in which there was discussion about so-called “shrinking cities.” This is a very sharp, aware guy. At that meeting someone reportedly said “29 U.S. cities have grown recently and the rest have shrunk.” This made my friend wonder if we should rethink “smart growth” as being about growth management, since so few places are actually growing.

That didn’t sound right to me at all, so I checked the facts: Of 366 metropolitan areas tracked by the U.S. census, 324 (89 percent) grew between 2000 and 2009; 161 of them, roughly half, grew by ten percent or more in only nine years. Now, as we all know, central-city population in America was in decline for most of the last several decades, although the trend is clearly toward recovery. I didn’t check the central-city facts. But my guess is that the speaker had a point he or she wanted to make and chose a very select set of “facts” to support it — probably looking only at a subset of the places tracked by the census, and probably looking only at what was happening inside the central-city jurisdictional boundaries. Those city limits date back to the early 20th or even 19th century in many cases and bear little relation to how places really function today.

Consider the image below, which shows the city limits of Atlanta drawn on a satellite photo of the real Atlanta:

Whatever the statement’s origin, the impression generated — that few places are growing — could not be more false. It misled my friend and it could mislead policy-makers into some very ill-informed decisions. Managing growth is still highly relevant to any serious policy for sustainability, and I find it shocking that someone could come away from a growth management meeting, of all places, thinking that growth is less relevant than we may have thought.

Here’s how the problem occurs: Merriam-Webster defines a city as “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.” That’s the way most of us use the word, most of the time. But Merriam-Webster also defines a city as “a usually large or important municipality in the United States governed under a charter granted by the state.” Two different things: using the first definition, one might say that “Atlanta” is a sprawling metropolis and powerful economic engine with a population of 5.4 million people; but, using the second, Atlanta becomes a much smaller area confined within an artificially drawn boundary containing only some 540,000 residents.

The smaller, jurisdictional Atlanta may mean something to candidates for city office and cartographers, but it has very little to do with economic or environmental reality. Let’s zoom in. On the image below, the bright line shows the city limits of Atlanta. If there is a meaningful distinction in the real world to be made between the areas inside and outside the “city,” it sure eludes me:

In truth, it has been a long time since economies operated within a jurisdiction’s municipal boundaries, if they ever did. As the Brookings institution puts it, metropolitan regions “are our hubs of research and innovation, our centers of human capital, and our gateways of trade and immigration. They are, in short, the drivers of our economy, and American competitiveness depends on their vitality.”

That is the new metropolitan reality and we need a new strategy that reflects it — a strategy that’s about South Florida as much as Miami; that’s about Mesa and Scottsdale as much as Phoenix; that’s about Stamford and Northern New Jersey as much as New York City.

Heck, even in my own life, my wife and I live in Washington, D.C., “the city,” but she works in suburban Virginia; I rode my bike yesterday and pretty much every weekend from my house into Maryland and back without even noticing where the jurisdictional boundary is. I’m not exactly sure whether my doctor’s office is in D.C. or Maryland. I just know it’s close to the line, on one side or the other; the street and buildings look exactly the same on both sides of the boundary. My NRDC colleagues go home in the evenings to a dozen different municipalities.

The environment doesn’t respect political boundaries, either: the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers receive runoff from Virginia and Maryland as well as from the jurisdictional city of Washington; the Chesapeake Bay watershed (above) includes parts of seven states. Regional transportation patterns completely ignore jurisdictional boundaries. The air in Chicago moves freely around the seven counties and 284 separate communities just within the Illinois part of the region, to say nothing of those in nearby Wisconsin and Indiana. Very little of the energy consumed within the jurisdictional limits of the city of San Francisco is generated there. And so on. Statistics about only what is happening inside city limits very seldom tell us much about what is relevant environmentally.

I would submit that the other scale (besides regions) that matters most is the neighborhood. Neighborhoods become especially relevant when they are complete, when there are multiple amenities, shops, and conveniences within walking distance or, at worst, a short rather than long drive away. Neighborhoods are where we eat and sleep and where, if we are lucky, our kids play and go to school; where we shop for food, take our dry cleaning, and maybe grab a bite to eat; where we have chance encounters with others; if we’re really lucky, the neighborhood will even have a library and a hardware store.

While those of us who live in metro areas — and that’s 83 percent of all Americans — zip all around them to visit friends, conduct business, and shop, we’re usually going to other neighborhoods when we do. If the region represents the economic scale of real cities, the neighborhood represents the human scale.

Neighborhoods are also the scale at which land development takes place, where new buildings and facilities are proposed, debated, and constructed. They are where developm
ent decisions actually occur, and where we must pay attention if we want to have influence. In fact, one of the best ways to reduce regional emissions is to revitalize older neighborhoods, because their relatively central locations reduce transportation emissions and they require little if any increase in runoff-causing impervious surface. Not that you would ever guess that by the miniscule number of professionals in national environmental organizations who work directly on making it happen.

So where does that leave cities (in the jurisdictional sense of the word)? They certainly remain very important politically. In big cities, we can address problems at scale when we lack the legal and regulatory tools to do so regionally. So that’s where we frequently advocate stormwater regulation, building standards, complete streets, zoning reform, and even climate policy. It’s where we can get things accomplished.

But that’s partly because cities are the low-hanging fruit of environmental standards and regulation. We often look to mayors, for example, for leadership on environmental issues, even though their authority is limited to the parts of their regions that are almost always already the most sustainable, on a per capita basis. It frequently pays off: Urban mayors tend to be more innovative and progressive than their suburban counterparts.

But, when we focus inside the city limits instead of on the region, we’re missing most of the problem, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Stormwater runoff per capita is much worse in suburban sprawl, as are emissions of all sorts.

One can even make the case that we should be going easier on cities than on sprawling places: To paraphrase David Owen, why put skinny people on diets? My personal view is that our environmental framework absolutely should be tougher on sprawling places than urban ones, but that urban ones should also do their fair share to heal our ecosystems, through appropriate standards, safeguards, and mitigation. Unfortunately, I think we remain relatively less attentive to the suburbs, largely because our crazy patchwork of municipalities makes them legally so diffuse and with very rare exceptions there simply is no regional authority to address them as a group. This can sometimes lead to perverse results, where the most inherently sustainable places become subject to the toughest regulation.

Similarly, when we throw statistics around about “cities” that are limited to a fraction of a place’s actual developed area and population, we’re frequently being arbitrary and missing the economic and environmental points that matter most. To return to the “shrinking cities” phenomenon, if your area’s economy is in general decline leading to regional as well as central city population loss, that’s one thing, leading to one set of appropriate responses; but, if regional centers are hollowing out while the economy remains viable enough to support continued sprawl on the fringe, that’s quite another — and one that must be addressed by looking outside the city’s jurisdictional borders as well as within. Failure to do so is, in my opinion, simply irresponsible. But a statistic only about the jurisdictional central city won’t tell you which of the two differing circumstances is actually occurring.

Finally, and deviating slightly from topic, a personal beef: There is also another way in which these otherwise artificial jurisdictional lines matter. Today, most of you will have the opportunity to cast a vote for a representative and perhaps a senator. As a resident within the city limits of Washington, I’m allowed to do neither.

Filed under: Cities, Politics]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-11-02-cities-may-not-matter-as-much-as-we-think/feed/0atlanta-flickr-kla4067.jpgAtlanta outline, Google EarthAtlanta outline, Google Earth zoom-inChesapeake Bay watershed mapRebuilding a historic neighborhood where some risked all for their humanityhttp://grist.org/article/2010-10-28-rebuilding-a-historic-neighborhood/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/article/2010-10-28-rebuilding-a-historic-neighborhood/#commentsFri, 29 Oct 2010 04:16:23 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-28-rebuilding-a-historic-neighborhood/]]>King leading the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery to protest lack of voting rights for African Americans. Beside King are John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman, and Ralph Abernathy.Photo: Steve SchapiroCross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Montgomery, Ala. was the epicenter of the civil rights movement that changed America. Not just Montgomery, of course, and not even just the South, for that matter. But Montgomery was where a seamstress named Rosa Parks declined to surrender her seat on a bus in 1955, triggering a year-long bus boycott and, essentially, the modern civil rights movement itself; where the house of Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church from 1954-1960, was bombed in 1956; where Freedom Riders were assaulted and required federal protection from further attacks at Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in 1961.

Montgomery was where John Lewis was intending to march peacefully from Selma in support of voting rights when he was knocked unconscious by law enforcement officials in 1965; where King, Abernathy, Lewis and other prominent leaders later successfully did march from Selma; and from where civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was traveling back to Selma from the march when she was assassinated.

Along that historic march route in Montgomery is an obscure block called Caroline Street, for decades the site of barracks-style public housing projects that in recent years have been closed, boarded up, and beset by arson. It’s a badly disinvested neighborhood in need of the kind of help that shows respect for its history while providing a better living environment for its residents.

This is where Karja Hansen’s recent essay in the online journal Fortnight comes in. Hansen is an architecture and engineering student, as well as an associate at Duany Plater-Zyberk. Her wonderfully written (and titled) essay, “Marching In Place,” takes the reader inside a planning charrette dedicated to redesigning the blocks where the abandoned housing projects now sit. She places the planning exercise squarely in the context of the site’s rich history:

As these marchers crested the final hill along their route, it widened into a broad intersection of three different streets where the old grid of development, aligned to the river, met the newer, compass point-aligned grid. At this transition point they turned, skirting the northwest corner of the Caroline Street Projects, a large mass of government housing shoehorned into two oversized, inhumanly scaled city blocks lining Caroline Street. The marchers began walking downhill towards downtown and the river, their struggle nearly over. But Caroline Street’s struggle, made up of many of the same issues, was just beginning.

Professionally, I live in a world populated by policy and planning wonks, and our daily rituals place a premium on precision and minutiae. We talk about things like metric tons of carbon dioxide, vehicle miles traveled, legislative history buried in subcommittee reports, intersections per square mile, and so on. The implicit rule seems to be that the more we drain all touches of subjectivity, humanity, or a sense of wonder (surely the only phrase explicitly associated with both Rachel Carson and Van Morrison) from our work, the more effective we will be in creating policy and standards. Maybe so, but I will always celebrate the personal over the precise, and that is exactly what Hansen gives us. Not that she neglects the wonky details:

The blocks on which these projects were built had an enormous grain, measuring over 900 feet along this blighted block of Caroline, and 450 feet along the shorter sides — a standard city block usually ranges from 250 to 350 feet in length and is closer to a square than a rectangle. A football field, for comparison, is 160 by 300 feet.

Another interesting find was an alley and a parking lot reaching into the core of the two block area from the perimeter, which would allow us to cut down the size of the blocks by turning them into streets.

We moved forward with the clear thought of punching the two alleys through, forming four misaligned and much smaller blocks, and at the center of our plan the neighborhood center became clear. We identified this nexus as important and needing slightly different treatment. We quickly rolled through potential different approaches including a plaza ringed by shops, denser housing with shops below facing the central intersection and others …

Finally, a plan was settled on that celebrated the center intersection, defined more spaces and gave them purposes as parks, walkways, and gathering places, and provided a diversity of housing and business types.

Surely any housing built on the site of the projects will be priced to be inclusive and affordable to a range of residents. Hansen’s essay doesn’t say, and the city’s planning site is devoid of details on the neighborhood. My tentative enthusiasm for the plan will be confirmed when I am assured that is the case. But I like the planning direction, and it certainly won’t be difficult to improve on what’s there now.

The final plan for Caroline Street will have the advantage of building upon a previously adopted master plan and supporting “SmartCode” for downtown Montgomery and adjacent neighborhoods, crafted for the city by the architecture and planning firm Dover, Kohl, & Partners. Over 850 community members participated in the planning, and you can see some of the vision in the site plan and conceptual before-and-after images above. (Look closely to note how not just the streets but also the buildings subtly change in the before and after.) Because the new plan for the Caroline Street sites will be consistent with the adopted master plan and code, the need for further hearings and legal approvals will be greatly reduced. Hansen expects that construction will be able to begin by next spring; when it does, a neighborhood that deserves much more respect will begin to get some.

According to its website, “Fortnightpromotes the unique capacities of the new media generation, while reasserting its commitment to precedent. Fortnight is not an academic, political or literary journal; rather, it is a multimedia archive of a generation in the midst of their life and work.” As an extra treat, by the way, you can click on the site of Hansen’s article for an audio version read by the author.

Filed under: Cities]]>http://grist.org/article/2010-10-28-rebuilding-a-historic-neighborhood/feed/0montgomery.jpgcivil rights marchersMontgomery before and afterA very impressive two weeks for the federal sustainability partnershiphttp://grist.org/article/2010-10-22-a-very-impressive-two-weeks-for-federal-sustainability/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_kaidbenfield
http://grist.org/article/2010-10-22-a-very-impressive-two-weeks-for-federal-sustainability/#commentsSat, 23 Oct 2010 01:24:25 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2010-10-22-a-very-impressive-two-weeks-for-federal-sustainability/]]>Atlanta was awarded $47 million for the construction of a new streetcar line. This image is one suggestion of how the project may look when completed.Image: Galounger

In a breathtaking series of press conferences and releases along with the publication of a new report, the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities — which is led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Transportation (DOT) — has announced an impressive amount of federal assistance to a wide array of sustainability projects across the country. If you’ve been wondering what the three now-collaborating agencies have been up to with respect to tangible products — and I confess that even I have been impatient at times — these last two weeks should have alleviated any doubts. They are making a difference.

Department of Transportation

Most impressive in terms of monetary support was Wednesday’s announcement of grant winners under the Department of Transportation’s TIGER II (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) program. Forty-two capital construction projects and 33 planning projects in 40 states — most of them related to sustainable transportation and land use — will share nearly $600 million “for major infrastructure projects ranging from highways and bridges to transit, rail, and ports,” DOT Secretary Ray LaHood said in a press release. “These are innovative, 21st century projects that will change the U.S. transportation landscape by strengthening the economy and creating jobs, reducing gridlock, and providing safe, affordable, and environmentally sustainable transportation choices.”

The capital grant winners were chosen from nearly 1,000 construction grant applications for more than $19 billion in assistance. For the planning grants, especially impressive is that 14 of the winners are receiving not only TIGER II grants but also coordinated Sustainable Community Challenge Grants from HUD; these can be used for localized planning efforts, such as development around a transit stop and zone or building code updates and improvements. DOT and HUD, with assistance from the EPA and the Department of Agriculture, participated jointly in the evaluation of the planning grant applications.

The city of Atlanta, receiving $47.6 million to construct a new streetcar line, is among the capital grant winners, as is South Salt Lake City, which is building the Sugar House streetcar line. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a capital grant will enable the completion of a nearly 200-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail system serving the 2.5 million residents of Contra Costa and Alameda counties in California. See all capital grant winners here.

Remarkably, three of the 75 TIGER II winners involve the act or consideration of replacing outdated urban freeways with more neighborhood-friendly boulevards, something I advocated here a few weeks ago with regard to the Claiborne expressway that bifurcates New Orleans’ Tremé district. Claiborne was one of the planning grant winners, as was the Sheridan Expressway corridor in New York City. The New Haven Downtown Crossing project — which will convert Connecticut Route 34 from a limited access highway to two complete-street, urban boulevards with road, streetscape, bicycle and pedestrian enhancements — was a capital grant winner. Go here for a nice summary of these three projects.

The Claiborne project was a joint DOT-HUD planning grant winner, as was Jersey City’s Canal Crossing, a 111-acre redevelopment site surrounded by predominately minority households with high unemployment and poverty rates:

Revitalization of this area has been hampered by outdated infrastructure, large tracts of contaminated former industrial lands, and a road system that fails to sufficiently link up with the local regional rail network. The project focus will be to create a residential, mixed-use, transit-oriented development with access to open space amenities in a community with a significant low-income population.

Another joint planning grant will allow University City, Mo., outside St. Louis, to pursue improvements to the historic and revitalizing Parkview Gardens neighborhood, fostering greater connectivity to the light rail system; creating LEED-certified affordable housing; and developing a portion of the Centennial Greenway trail and on-street bike routes. The project “will redesign parks as the center of neighborhood life and create local development plans.”

In addition to the challenge grants, HUD announced late last week that 45 regions around the country had been selected to receive a collective $100 million in federal support for sustainability planning to “integrate affordable housing with neighboring retail and business development” and to “leverage existing infrastructure and reward local collaboration and innovation.” Of that amount, some $25 million was awarded to smaller metro regions and rural areas. (Twenty-eight of the 75 DOT winners were also in rural areas.)

Increase the construction of housing and employment centers in high-frequency transit areas that promote social equity, inclusion, access to opportunity, public health, and neighborhood revitalization and reduce environmental impacts.

Integrate housing, land use, and transportation planning and programs.

Use the Sacramento region as a pilot test to develop comprehensive recommendations and a handbook to improve the integration of federal, state, regional and local plans, policies and programs for the purpose of effectively implementing place-based planning.

The South Florida Regional Planning Council of Hollywood seeks to put in place the Southeast Florida Regional Plan for Sustainable Development and to ensure that planning and investment decisions yield a more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable region. The project will integrate data, tools, and models to assess the region today, understand the region’s future, and track progress. A monitoring plan will focus on measuring progress toward specific regional outcomes aligned with all six [federal] Livability Principles, plus a seventh climate change principle because of Southeast Florida’s unique vulnerability to its most severe impacts.

But wait, there’s more: earlier this week the EPA announced it had selected seven areas to receive technical assistance for smart growth implementation. Four of them — in north Georgia, the Chicago region, Utah (the area covered by the Utah Transit Authority in Salt Lake City and Sandy City), and Wheat Ridge, Colo. — will receive help in developing “financing strategies for infrastructure investments located around transit-oriented development; land assemblage; parking garages; stormwater management; streets and sidewalks; facade improvements; infrastructure phasing; energy efficiency; and other necessary infrastructure components.”

The other areas will receive varying kinds of assistance:

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments will receive assistance with assessing climate change risks to the Washington, D.C., region, identifying smart growth strategies that would improve the region’s capacity to adapt to climate change.

Rhode Island’s KeepSpace Advisory Committee will be assisted in developing and applying a set of measurements for use in funding decisions that can ensure that state dollars are leveraging investments across transportation, housing, and infrastructure and achieving statewide planning goals.

Saginaw, Mich., which has suffered a decline in central-city population and an increase in the number of vacant and abandoned properties in city neighborhoods, will receive help in developing a land use and infrastructure strategy that supports sustainable redevelopment of abandoned properties, helps stabilizes distressed neighborhoods, and creates opportunities for long-term economic growth.

The challenges that these communities are facing are also being experienced in other jurisdictions around the country, and these efforts are being designed partially to develop and test replicable models that can be applied elsewhere.

This comes on the heels of last month’s announcement of aid in green building and infrastructure design to five state capitals: Boston, Charleston (W.Va.), Hartford, Jefferson City (Mo.), and Little Rock:

EPA has selected five state capital cities to receive high-quality green development that includes cleaning up and recycling vacant lands, accessing and improving waterways, providing greater housing and transportation choices, and reducing infrastructure and energy costs. The Agency will organize teams of urban planners and landscape architects to provide direct, customized technical assistance as requested by each community. Greening America’s Capitals is not a grant; it provides direct technical assistance to communities by working with private-sector experts and leveraging other partners, such as HUD and DOT, to consider implementation options. In addition to helping the selected state capitals build a greener future and civic pride, this assistance will help create models that other cities can look to in creating their own sustainable designs.

Moreover, in addition to the projects being assisted by the EPA’s smart growth office, its brownfields office has also been active. (Brownfields are properties where the presence or potential presence of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants may complicate the properties’ expansion, redevelopment, or reuse.) Last week, the agency announced that it is awarding $4 million in assistance to 23 communities, many in underserved and economically disadvantaged areas, to develop area-wide plans for the reuse of brownfields properties. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan joined EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus in the announcement, and both HUD and DOT will collaborate with the EPA to help these communities create a shared vision for brownfields redevelopment.

For example, in Goshen, Ind., the EPA will help the city address its 9th Street Industrial Corridor, which is 12 blocks long and contains 350 parcels. A long history of intensive manufacturing has left a legacy of contamination and abandoned, vacant, or underutilized industrial properties. There are at least 61 brownfields in the corridor, which is surrounded by residential areas and several schools. The city’s comprehensive plan for the area will advance redevelopment and brownfield reuse efforts, identify cleanup goals, and evaluate infrastructure conditions. The goal will be to redevelop the corridor for modern manufacturing and industrial reuse, and create new jobs in the process.

In San Diego, the EPA’s brownfields grant will assist a partnership led by the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation in transforming approximately 60 acres of blighted, under-utilized properties into a vibrant, livable community that is projected to create more than 1,000 jobs, 1,000 quality affordable housing units, 645,000 square feet of new commercial space, and at least 400,000 square feet of green open space and parks. The Village at Market Creek is a resident-led, -driven, and -owned development project in the Diamond Neighborhoods of southeastern San Diego.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities

Yesterday, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, DOT Secretary LaHood, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson held a press conference heralding the achievements of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities during its first year. The press release included a statement from President Obama: “We’re working to change the way government works, and that means investing tax dollars wisely and well. We want to make sure that when we’re building infrastructure, we’re considering how housing, transportation, and the environment all impact each other. These grants are designed to get the biggest bang for our tax dollar buck.”

“President Obama has made clear that sustainable communities with affordable housing and access to a broad range of transportation options are vital to rebuilding the foundation for prosperity in this country,” Jackson added. “[The work of the Partnership] has already helped to create healthier communities and open up better opportunities to attract new jobs and investments.”

The partnership’s considerable accomplishments so far have been summarized in a report, A Year of Progress for America’s Communities, which was released two weeks ago. Congratulations to the White House and the leadership and staff of these agencies for all of their work. If anyone doesn’t understand that the federal government and its many dedicated employees are helping Americans in very tangible ways, they just aren’t paying attention.

Posting on boston.com, the website of The Boston Globe, Alan Taylor has presented 26 striking images of Florida sprawl, much of the development unfinished for lack of buyers, and just about all of it within a convenient walk of, well, nothing. Not that you could get there on foot anyway, given how badly disconnected many of the streets are. (Among land use characteristics, poor street connectivity is the best predictor of a neighborhood’s low rate of walking, and the second best predictor of a high rate of driving.)

The development above, for example, is “in” Punta Gorda, “near Charlotte Harbor, near Fort Myers,” writes Taylor. For that image, I went to Google Earth and captured it; Taylor has a slightly different one in his post. I then went to Google Earth’s street view feature, which shows one of the, um, “blocks” in that development — looking like this, as of April this year:

Many homes there are empty and have been for years. Huge developments sit partially completed among densely built up neighborhoods and swampland. A guest stated that there were ‘enough housing lots in Charlotte County to last for more than 100 years’. Boom and bust residential development has drastically affected parts of southwest Florida for decades now, and I spent some time (with the help of Google Earth), looking around the area. With permission from the fine folks at Google, here are a few glimpses at development in southwest Florida.